


A Rookie's Heist

by dilangley



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: Another Adventure, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, No Unnecessary Angst, happy marriage, post-epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-02-26 08:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13231863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dilangley/pseuds/dilangley
Summary: Blackbeard's treasure. Twelve million in gold and jewels.Nate isn't tempted to chase that down. He's out of the game, planning a dive outside the Great Barrier Reef.Of course, he isn't the only Drake around, and when Cassie meets a vagabond her own age with ties to the treasure hunt... Nate finds himself once again chasing those seeking their fortunes.[a post-U4 family adventure]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Because I love this family and their happy ending. Because I always want more.

 

_The rope spun in a slow, lazy twist, and Nathan Drake inched up again. Above him, he could hear a large, sharp crack from the wood. Creaking could be expected from three hundred year old wood, but cracking never boded well. He resisted the urge to take his hand off the rope and swat at the cloud of mosquitoes whining around his head._

_Profane words tingled on his lips as he edged up another foot and heard another ominous creak. He looked down at the impossible drop, a tangle of vivid green tree tops and certain death. He looked at the slick, mossy cliff face in front of him._

  _“I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered._

 

\-----------------------

 

“I hate office days.”

Nathan looked over at his daughter, her face still frozen in her frustrated groan.

“Every day can’t be digs and dives,” he said. He lifted the University of Queensland scans from a recent book on wreckage off the Great Barrier Reef.

Private interest groups had been pushing for permission for years, trying to get authorization to dive, but blockages came from every angle. Environmental groups were horrified, historical preservation societies feared important artifacts in private hands but lacked the resources to fund investigations, and the Australian government wanted to keep everything in house. However, D&F Fortunes had enough clout these days to start piecing together a proposal that just might go through.

Nate needed to comb clues to ensure the wreckage would turn up profitable, and Elena needed to look into permits. An undeniable office day. At thirteen, Cassie’s love of history and deep reckless streak made her a pleasure in the field and a chore in the office. Right now, Elena had her comparing small artifacts from their last Italian dig to Etruscan collections at world museums. Nate knew only too well how slow that kind of work could be and also knew it wasn’t yet  in a kid to appreciate its long-term value.

“You hate paperwork. You and Mom are always trying to avoid it. Now you’re just pushing it off on me because I don’t have a choice,” Cassie said.

“You’re damn right.” Nate grinned.

“We all have to pitch in. We still do more paperwork than you do. You know that,” Elena said at the same time. Nate glanced at her, kicked back in the office chair, bare feet on the desk, laptop balanced on her lap. He watched her push the reading glasses from her nose onto the top of her head as she turned her gaze from the screen to her daughter. Nate’s mouth twitched at their matching stubborn expressions.

“Well, I still hate it.” Cassie backed down first. Elena chuckled.

The family worked in companionable quiet for the next hour, their heads bobbing along to Cuban tunes pouring from the laptop. A loud knock surprised them all; they weren’t the sort of company with hours posted on the door. Nate jumped to his feet first and opened it. The bearded man, clothed in jeans and flannel even in the Florida heat, stepped inside without asking permission.

“Hey there. I’m looking for Nathan Drake.”

Swallowing down his irritation at the ballsy approach, Nate extended his hand. “Welcome to D&F Fortunes.”

The other man sized Nate up openly. He frowned as if disappointed. “Are you Nathan Drake?”

The familiar hot prickle licked up Nate’s spine. He pulled his hand back. These guys came every once in a while, every so often, people of every color and creed, some dressed in Armani and some in fishing gear, all with the same request. They wanted _The_ Nathan Drake. They wanted El Dorado and Shambhala. They wanted Iram and Libertalia. Archaeological protocol, brushes and plasters and permissions, did not interest them. They wanted treasure and immeasurable wealth.

Without fail, Nate turned them away. He hadn’t lied to Elena when he told her he was ready to leave that life behind. The backs of his eyelids played the montage of fallen bodies, collapsing ruins, zombies, and Yetis some nights when he fell asleep. The world would always spill blood over mysteries and dreams, but he could have adventure without agony. Without looking, he knew that if he turned around, he would see Elena unworried, without apprehension or concern. Once he had stopped lying to himself, he had never lied to her again. Her trust warmed a soft hollow in his chest.

“I am, and this is my wife, Elena.” He motioned toward the desk chair, now empty as she rose to her feet. “We’re the owners.”

The bearded man looked distastefully at Elena and back to Nate. “I’m David Belfast, and I have a job for you.”

“Have a seat.” Nate rolled him an office chair, gave Elena a “Don’t kill him for being an asshole. I’ll send him away in a minute” look, and leaned against the edge of the desk. Elena stepped out, shooting back her own look. “I’ll bite. What’s the job?”

Belfast took a seat, leaned back in the chair. Nate judged a man who would sit down so casually in a stranger’s office.

“I’m not a wealthy man, Mr. Drake. I’ve spent my life working hard. I’m a fishing boat captain, North Carolina born and bred, and I’ve grown up on the stories of Blackbeard.”

“And his treasure.” Nate cut to the chase. Belfast nodded.

“And his treasure,” Belfast confirmed. “So me and a buddy saved our money over the years. We’re single guys, confirmed old bachelors, and we knew we were going to bankroll it one day. The find. The whole thing.”

“How’s that going?”

Belfast frowned at the sarcasm, heavy in Nate’s voice. “Badly. Until we found a map that’s going to lead us right there.”

“Oh, really? A map? Just like that?” Nate shrugged his shoulders. “Congratulations, pal. What brings you here then?”

This time, Belfast didn’t detect the mocking. “It’s coded. Unbreakable. From there, it all fell apart. The map got stolen, and now someone else is on the trail of the treasure. He’s hired treasure hunters, mercenaries, the whole lot. We’re following them instead of following the map. My partner left me, I’m spending every day following some asshole with my map and every night looking at grainy cell phone pictures I still can’t uncode.”

“Decode,” Nate corrected automatically.

“Jesus, you’re a dick.” Belfast stood up, his eyes wide, angry. “I’m telling you I have a map to Blackbeard’s treasure, and you’re correcting my grammar. I’ll split it with you. You help me get there first, and I’ll give you 20%.”

Nate wondered if he should point out that even the most optimistic estimates of Blackbeard’s missing treasure only ranked it around twelve million dollars. If you were going to come to try to drag a veteran treasure hunter out of retirement, you needed something better than that. Even someone with resolve less solid than his wasn’t risking the travel constipation, let alone dismemberment or death, for two million in pirate treasure.

“We don’t do that kind of work.” Nate picked up an application, a fifteen page document. He fanned the pages toward Belfast. “If we’re not pursuing a project ourselves, this is just the start of what we need. You need every i dotted and every t crossed. Insurance, land use permits, licensed equipment and men to use it, government approval…”

“Bullshit. You’re _Nathan Drake_.” Nate raised an eyebrow and Belfast continued, “I started looking around the black market, trying to find something, and out of all the names I found, everyone started by saying ‘Nathan Drake was the best but…’ or ‘If you want to get there first, you need Nathan Drake but…’ This world of buts. I’m tired of it. I want the treasure I’ve wanted my whole life, and I need the best guy in the business to get it for me.”

“You’ll have to get it for yourself,” Nate said. _Like all the rest of us always had to do, buddy_.

Belfast might be ignorant of the world he was trying to enter, but he was no fool. He shook his head. “I didn’t think you could turn down something like this. Not with the adventure stories I’ve heard. If you change your mind, call me. I won’t fly out for a few more hours.”

“I won’t change my mind, Mr. Belfast. Good luck on finding what you’re looking for.”

Only after the screen door fell shut behind Belfast’s determined stride did Nate realize Cassie had been in the office the whole time, quietly filing artifacts at the back table, earbuds tucked in.

“You catch any of that conversation?” Nate walked back to the table. She pulled one bud out of her ear when he touched her shoulder.

“What conversation?” Cassie raised an eyebrow, and Nate raised his right back. “Oh. That guy? No. I was listening to music. He want to hire you and Mom for a job?”

“Yeah. He had no idea what he was doing though. Not our kind of job.”

“Oh. When I finish this, can I go see if Aleja is home? I’ve had about enough of squinting at bronze.”

“Yeah. Catalogue two more and then call it a day.” He looked down at her notes: meticulous, accurate, and outlined with funny cartoon sketches of the artifacts in motion. “This is good work, Cass.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

Impulsively, he kissed the top of her head, earned himself an exasperated look, and got back to work.

 

\-------------------------

 

Cassie ducked into the paint aisle of the local hardware store and bumped against someone. She waved apologetically only to see it was a display stand topped with the original Benjamin Moore’s smiling face.

“Damn it,” she muttered. It had taken her nearly an hour to locate David Belfast, only to find him mundanely studying clasps in the hardware store. He didn’t look like a man who would be treasure hunting. Unlike her dad, with his broad sturdiness, and her Uncle Sam, with his lean, ropey strength, this man had the softness of too many beers hanging around his middle and on his slow-witted face. Still, she didn’t want him to recognize her. She knew from too many adults how identical she was to her mother.

Listening to Belfast pitch the idea of Blackbeard’s treasure, her heart’s beat became an insistent thud. Her dad had once been the best damn treasure hunter in the world; this overheard conversation was better proof than any locked cabinet or story from Sully. The sarcastic, pun-loving man who cut the crusts off her peanut butter and jelly until she was ten really had done it all.

Cassie had to see that map. She had to see if she could decode it. An unsolved mystery had walked right into the office, dangled itself in front of her, and issued a challenge: _Are you a Drake, Cassie?_

She tilted her head around the aisle and peeked at Belfast. He had selected something and was making his way to the counter to pay. Once he finished, she followed him, staying far enough behind to be unnoticed. She forced herself to look around, tried to push her face into an interested expression, as if she had never been so fascinated by the shingles on a roof or a passing bird.

She followed and debated how best to get her hands on the map. Were the grainy cell phone pictures going to be on the phone itself or printed out? Print-outs would be easier to take but harder to locate. Even from here she could see his phone in his back pocket, visible over the denim.

“You’re not slick.” A voice at her elbow made her jump. She lurched, tripped over her own foot, and hit the ground hard. She ignored the sting in her hands and dull ache in her knees in favor of seeing the speaker. He was her age, as skinny and knobby-kneed as a little kid but taller than any of the fifteen kids in her class. He reached down to help her up, and she brushed him off, embarrassed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re following Belfast. You’ve been tailing him all afternoon.” His face broken into a smile, and the sun kicked through his gingery, sandy hair and nearly blinded her. “At least you’ve been trying to.”

She wanted to deny it, to challenge him, but she couldn’t think of a good lie. Besides, the boy’s open, congenial expression seemed approving.

“Yeah. I have.” She held out her hand for a business-like shake. “I’m Cassie.”

“We’re shaking hands like old people. Cool, cool.” He shook. “I’m Lewis.”

Cassie blushed even though his tone was not critical. Though she did attend school and did have friends, she spent more time with adults than kids her own age, and his point was valid. She couldn’t remember another middle schooler ever greeting her with a firm handshake.

“So Cassie, why are you following a boring old fishing boat captain?” Lewis asked archly.

“How do you know he’s a boring old fishing boat captain?” She retorted.

Lewis kept smiling. “Good question. I’m not going to answer it.”

“Then I’m not going to tell you why I’m following him.”

“Okay.” Lewis nodded and fell into step beside her as she kept walking.

“No. You’re not coming too.” She stopped again.

“Then how will I find out why you’re tailing him?”

“You _won’t_.” She started walking again. He stayed beside her. She realized with irritation that she had no idea whether Belfast had gone left or right up ahead. “And now it’s looking like I won’t either. He’s gone.”

“I know where he is.”

“Show me.”

“Nope. Not unless you tell me know why a girl like you is playing spy.”

Her eyes widened, and she counted to ten in her head, trying to keep herself from unleashing some of the best Drake family profanity on him. “Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Exhausting!”

For a second, his eyes flickered dark, a shadow of something old and unknown passing across them. Then he brightened again. “Yeah. I am.”

“I’m tailing him because he has a map to Blackbeard’s lost treasure, and I want to see it.” She let all her words out in a tumble, waiting for his impressed expression. Instead he nodded matter-of-factly.

“It’s in code, and he doesn’t know how to break it,” Lewis said.

“I know. That’s why I…” She paused. “You knew!”

“Yeah. He hired me back in Key West.” Lewis started walking again, and this time, she matched his stride. “He needed a thief.”

This time he waited for her to be impressed, his eyes bright, his lips parted in eager anticipation. Instead Cassie found herself extremely intrigued. Even before her parents had given her The Talk a few months ago, she had always known she came from troublemakers because of Uncle Sam and Sully. She couldn’t have been more than five in her earliest memories of Sam showing her how to pocket playing cards, and a few years ago, Sully had winked her way when she had tried to sneak a cigar out of his pocket, Sam-style. She tried to imagine this eager kid picking pockets, and the imaginings didn’t match the reality in front of her. Thieves had to be sneaky.

“Really?”

“Kind of.” Lewis shrugged his honesty off. “He needed someone small enough to fit through air vents, and I think he picked me because I was the only hungry street kid he came across that week.”

Cassie batted down the swirl of rude questions she wanted to ask: _Why were you on the street? How did he know you were a thief? What have you stolen?_

Lewis talked on his own, unprompted. “I’m pretty slick, but I hadn’t ever tried to take anything valuable. Belfast paid me to steal and then let me come along here with him. I figure if I show him I’m useful, he might take me to Saint Lucia back to where they’re looking for the treasure. Can you imagine what I could do if I could pocket a few doubloons?”

Cassie watched the eagerness flood his face, and a knife twisted in her stomach. Her life, this charmed, easy, loved existence, made it easy to disregard her own luck. She had never thought about money, ignored it in the way only those who had it could.

“You’d be more likely to pocket some treasure if you could decode the map, know where to look before Belfast did,” she said. “I could help.”

“How? No offense, but you don’t seem like a codebreaker.”

“I’m Cassie Drake.” She said her last name with the same gravitas Belfast had back in the office. “I’ll figure it out.”

“Drake? Like the Drake he came here for?” Lewis perked up again.

“Yeah.”

“So your dad’s a bigshot treasure hunter…”

“Best there ever was,” she bragged, hopeful the bravado would earn her Lewis’s cooperation.

“Wow.” He thought it through, not really talking to her. “Maybe you can help after all.”

“I can.” As she stuck her chin out, squinted past him into the setting sun, she heard the thumping of epic theme music in her head, saw herself standing against a backdrop of chests overflowing with gold and jewels, her decoded map clutched in her fingers. She saw people showing up in the office asking her parents if they could speak to _Cassandra_ Drake, _The_ Cassandra Drake.

She saw reflections of similar grandiose dreams in Lewis’s eyes.

“Let’s do this,” he agreed.

\----------------------

 

“Is she old enough to bring home a boy?” Nathan demanded in a fierce whisper as they poured a bowl of seafood paella for the skinny kid sitting in the living room.

“She didn’t bring home a boy,” Elena said. She glanced the same direction as if for reassurance. “She just… brought home a… boy.”

“Oh, well then, if the difference is _that_ dramatic.”

“Shut up, Nate.” Her smile lit up her whole face, and he praised himself for another smartass moment well-played. Then he turned his attention back to the matter at hand. His little girl had brought home a boy, a kid who had all the awkwardness of adolescence on his skinny frame but also the promise of adulthood. When he squared up his shoulders and proffered his hand like a man, Nate hadn’t missed the way Lewis looked him right in the eye. The kid out there wasn’t just a kid.

And that scared him because there was a chance that meant that his kid wasn’t just a kid either. Maybe he just didn’t see it. Maybe fathers always looked at their daughters and saw tiny hands folded in theirs, felt the ghosts of sticky toddler kisses.

“Dinner’s ready.” He stuck his head around the corner to see Cassie and Lewis sitting on the floor side by side at the table, a piece of paper between them, heads bent together. Alarm bells sounded in his brain.

“Thanks, Dad!” Cassie hopped up and made her way to the kitchen. Lewis followed her like a puppy, eager at her heels.

Around the table, conversation flowed easily at first. Lewis spoke most comfortably with Cassie, as expected, but he warmed to Elena nearly as quickly. He talked about books beyond his years, comfortably discussing cheap thrillers like Dean Koontz as well as Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Nate watched both of his girls smile at Lewis’s open, charming sincerity, his insatiable curiosity matched only by his appetite.

“So, Lewis, did your family just move here to the island?” Elena asked as he dug into his third bowl of paella.

“My family?” Lewis replied, his eyes widening. He glanced at Cassie, and she gave a millisecond response, double raised eyebrows before quickly dropping her eyes to her stew. Nate waited for the inevitable lie. Lewis continued, “I don’t really have one. I’m in town for a few days with someone. Not sure where I’ll be headed after that.”

Nate tried not to be impressed by the kid’s blunt honesty.

“Are you an orphan?” He asked.

Lewis shook his head, averted his gaze for the first time since entering the house. “No, sir. I’m not.”

Cassie shot both parents a stone cold look, and Nate took it seriously, letting her guide the conversation back to safer topics. When they finished eating, she and Lewis offered to do the dishes.

“I was going to play you for it,” Elena said gently as they watched the kids take up residence at the sink. She slipped her arm around Nate's waist, tucked her body against his, and he pulled her closer thoughtlessly, needlessly, comfortably. That was the part of marriage, the part of this life, he could never have explained to himself when he was younger. When he stood at the altar, marrying her on a beach, he had only known he could never love anyone as much as he loved her. He hadn’t known what he wanted, and even if he had thought he had known, he would have been wrong because he couldn’t have understood this: the way his love for her became broken in over the years, soft and comfortable, a perfect fit.

“Of course you were. Because it was your turn to do them.”

“Hey, you hate paperwork, I hate dishes.” He watched the crinkle of early laugh lines at her eyes.

“I hate both,” he clarified. He leaned down to kiss her soundly before continuing, “I’m going to walk back to the office and do a little digging on this David Belfast. If he’s as much of an asshole as I think, I’m going to tip off some friends he might be coming.”

Elena nodded. “If he got the name Nathan Drake, he’s not going to be far from getting the names Sam or Sully or Chloe.”

“Yeah. And since he’s got himself tangled up against a pro, I’d rather he just get himself killed and not anyone else.”

“Alright. I’m going to keep an eye on our interesting new visitor. I’ll curl up with my red pen and our latest press release.”

He grinned. “This Etruscan find would put us on the map if we weren’t already there.”

“The famous Nathan Drake and Elena Fisher,” she said.

“Hey now. You know at home I prefer Elena Drake.” He slid a hand down to her butt, sneaked a look at the kids doing dishes to make sure they weren’t paying attention, and copped himself a long, satisfying feel before dashing out the door.

At the desktop in the office, he confirmed Belfast’s origin story, unremarkable and uninteresting. He sent Chloe a text message giving her heads up that someone might be coming her way, and then he called Sully. They talked for nearly ten minutes, and Nate pretended not to hear the tremor running under Sully’s voice. The old silver fox had tipped closer to eighty than seventy. Even though Nate didn’t want to admit it, he needed to load up the girls and take them to Cuba as often as possible. If he and Sully weren’t going to die in a firefight, he needed to be there the day Sully decided to go without him. He would be the one making, not receiving, the phone calls to tell the world Victor Sullivan had died.

He was about to walk back to the house when he heard a faint knock on the door. Lewis’s gingery head peeked in.

“Hey Mr. Drake. I just wanted to say thank you for dinner. It was really good.”

“You’re welcome.” Nate motioned for him to step inside, and he obeyed. He stared the kid down, turned over the information he had learned. “Here. Sit down for a minute.”

“Okay…” Lewis didn’t move. Nate sat down, and Lewis then took a seat too. Nate thought of Belfast, tossing himself back carelessly, and found himself once more a little impressed.

“I just wanted to hear a little more about you. Not an orphan, not sure what’s next. That’s quite a description.”

“Yes sir.” His Adam’s apple bobbled wildly.

“There’s got to be a story.”

“Yes sir.”

Nate frowned. “You’re not going to tell it, are you?”

“No sir.”

“You’re putting me in a weird position. I’m supposed to just walk away and let a kid go off the grid.”

“I’m fourteen if that helps.”

At fourteen, Nate had ended up alone on the streets of Cartagena, Colombia chasing a fictional legacy. He could still feel the phantom itch of all the lice.

“It doesn’t.” Nate scratched his five o’clock scruff. “I could put you in touch with the local PD on the nearest civilized island. They’re alright. They could help you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Someone’s gotta be looking for you.”

Lewis met his eye squarely and stood up. “No one’s looking for me. Thanks again for dinner.”

“You’re welcome,” Nate barely managed to get the words out before the kid slipped out of the door. Nate walked over. He saw the the shifting sands and the choppy, wind-tossed waves. Lewis was gone, no more than a shadow in darkness.

“Yeah, this one isn’t going to keep me up at night or anything,” Nate muttered as he shut the light off in the office and walked home.


	2. Chapter 2

  
  
Even in the warm Keys, the night air nipped cold. Cassie zipped up her hoodie against a stiff breeze and admired her own forethought; she had slipped back through her bedroom window to snag the hoodie, worried she might get chilly on her walk. She and Lewis planned to meet at the loading dock of the market. The little store, the only one on the island, would be sitting empty. The owner, Mrs. Sharma, was on a week’s vacation in Minnesota to enjoy snow with her grandbabies. From the market, it was only a hop, skip, and jump to the isolated little landing strip.

The plan had stayed intact in spite of her parents. Normally after nine, she retreated into her bedroom to pursue her own interests -- guitar being one of her most recent hobbies -- but tonight she had listened at her door, waiting for her parents to go to bed. Her assumptions about their early nights hadn’t proved correct.

“Want to watch  _ Jumanji _ ?” Her dad had asked.

“Are you going to complain about everything they do wrong?” Her mom had countered.

“Yup.”

“Sure, put it on.” Cassie had been able to hear the smile in her mom’s voice.

If they hadn’t been her parents, she might have thought it was cute how they put on a movie and then talked to each other the whole time. As it was, she just nervously listened and watched the clock, fretting about her midnight rendezvous time. They had laughed their way to bed a little after eleven. She glanced down at her watch now: 11:59 p.m. Another reason to be self-impressed. Focusing on her own intelligence distracted her from the thrumming nervousness in her veins.

As she rounded the corner behind the market, she saw Lewis sitting on the edge of the loading dock, his feet swinging and his face upturned to the stars. She considered pulling one of the classic capers, sneaking up and unleashing a nice loud “Boo!” but something in his thoughtful expression stalled her.

“Hey,” she whispered her greeting instead, a smile on her face, and he turned to her with a grin of his own.

“Hey.” He jumped to his feet. “You ready to steal a treasure map?”

“Yeah.” Their plan was simple: board the plane, grab the map, snap pictures of it, and then get out. Even she had to admit it was hardly a major heist but still, her heart pounded in her chest and her palms sweated. She wiped them on the front of her shirt.

“He’s not back to the plane yet. He has been looking for the pilot.” Lewis wrinkled his nose and waggled his eyebrows. “Who I happen to know met a  _ very _ nice lady on the beach earlier today.”

“Gross.” 

They walked side by side, eyes adjusting to the darkness. She saw him shiver against the chilly air and wished she had brought him something to wear over his thin tee shirt. 

“You scared?” His question caught her off-guard.

“Me? No,” she lied.

“The first time I stole something, I almost peed myself. I was hungry, so I took a bag of Goldfish and a banana, put them in my jacket pocket and walked right out the door of a gas station, but I was so nervous I threw them up when I tried to eat them.” He spoke slowly without looking her way until he finished, but his story cut right through her bravado. She nodded.

“Yeah. I’m a little scared,” she admitted.

“Don’t be. I won’t let you get caught.” He skipped a step in front of her and spun to walk backwards. “Which is awesome because it pretty much makes me a hero.”

“Whatever, cowboy,” she said, echoing the kind of teasing she had heard in the house her entire life. Lewis tipped an imaginary hat at her, and she stifled a laugh.

The last vestiges of path faded out to beach grass and sand, a reminder of this island’s straddle of civilization and wilderness. Of the 1700 islands here in the Florida Keys, only 43 were connected to mainland by bridges, and this wasn’t one of them. The only ways here were boat or air. Belfast’s choice of aircraft, some sort of medium-sized seaplane, sat still and dark on the runway. 

“C’mon. I unlocked it earlier while I was waiting for you,” Lewis said. Cassie shot him a look, and he shrugged. “What? You were taking forever.”

“I had to shake my parents. You know, the famous treasure hunter and the famous investigative journalist?” Cassie grumbled. 

He grinned. “Damn, they’re cool. Remind me  _ not _ to tell you about my parents later.”

Lewis broke into a light jog as they moved out onto the openness of the runway. She followed, her questions about his parents dissipating in the sudden reality of their actions. Nauseated and a little dizzy, she climbed into the back of the plane after Lewis. The narrow steps wobbled under their hurried feet.

Her stomach heaved when she saw the cramped interior. Stuff, disorganized and scattered, lay everywhere. The systemless, random piles made her shudder after years of checklists and thorough equipment packing for excursions with her parents. Her foot hit a loose flashlight and sent it rolling.

“Dude, he’s such a slob.” She picked up ripped cellophane on the floor, a memento of shiny, new equipment. “Where’re the map pictures?”

“I don’t know. Let me give you a nice thief saying for hitting a place like this,” Lewis said as he flicked on his flashlight.“‘Move everything; move nothing.’”

She nodded. “Got it.”

“Got it? You don’t need me to explain?”

“No.” She started lifting items -- a shoulder holster, a pile of flares banded together -- and did not look up as she spoke. She put her hands on a portable file bin and unhookied its clasps. “It’s self-explanatory.”

“I mean, no. It’s…”

“Lewis.” She looked up for a second, cut her hand in his direction sharply. “It means look around but make sure everything looks the same when you’re done.”

He held up both hands. “Sheesh. Yeah, that’s what it means. You don’t have to snap just ‘cause you’re nervous.”

She opened her mouth and then shut it again. “Let’s just hurry.”

Her fingers skimmed the papers in the file box. Without tabs or headers, she couldn’t find anything specific. She lifted out copied checks, written to an assortment of equipment companies. Some of the names were familiar, ones she had seen on paperwork she filed in the office. This Belfast guy was risking a lot of capital in hopes of a dicey reward. Her brain whirred as she searched, considering the two possibilities regarding the map. Either Belfast would be so paranoid about losing the map again that he would only keep one copy, tight to his person, secure.

“Or…” She murmured aloud, her intellectual activity once again overriding the hum of her nerves. 

“Or what?” Lewis echoed vaguely in the background, but she ignored him. She clambered over the seats into the passenger side of the cockpit. She needed to find some sort of equivalent of a glove compartment in a car. Sweet relief shot up her arm when she saw it, a slim slot beneath radio controls, a storage slot probably intended to hold licensing papers and emergency manuals. She stuck her hand in and pulled out a thrice-folded piece of paper.

“Or a guy like Belfast is so worried about losing the map again he’s stashing extra copies everywhere.” She held it up triumphantly, just to earn a flash of Lewis’s white teeth in the dark behind his light beam. Sudden energy crackled in the air between them, hot, sparking anticipation.

“Good look!” He hurried over to join her as she unfolded the paper. The map itself, hand-scrawled in its original form, was barely visible as a photocopy. The lines and swoops might have made the shape of an island, but strange hatch marks like sideways tallies marred the landscape. Lewis peered over the shoulder with his flashlight.

“This doesn’t really have any landmarks on it,” he said. “Or words. Or… anything.”

Disappointment crawled over her skin. “No. It doesn’t.”

He walked back over to the door, but Cassie rotated the paper in her fingers, squinted at the parallel lines. She tried to call on knowledge she didn’t have. In her memory, she could see her dad doing this same kind of work, see him pacing the living room, cutting out copies in strange shapes and laying them over one another, comparing marks in books to marks on items. 

From the side door, Lewis’s voice pitched to sudden urgency. “Cassie, c’mon, we’ve gotta get out of here. I can see him coming. Let’s go!” 

Her dad solved puzzles around her all the time, and yet she stared at this map and found nothing. His solutions might as well have come from thin air as far as they guided her now.

Lewis grabbed her arm and tugged her toward the door. She came reluctantly, eyes still on the map, fingers fumbling to fold it back up and stuff it in her pocket. Belfast wouldn’t miss it. Maybe. As Lewis dragged her toward the door, his flashlight caught on something shiny at the rear of the compartment.

“Wait a second.” She pulled loose and dipped her hand into a broken plastic crate. The flash of gold had come from an old spyglass, heavy bronze, inscribed on every surface with strange, deep notches. She pressed her fingernails into a set of the grooves. Something in her chest flared and roared, a freight train in her head screamed and blocked out all other thought:  _ This was  _ _ something _ _. _

“Cassie, he’s coming. Come. On.” Lewis had a hold of her again, pulling on her. “You can’t take that. That’s what he had me steal in Key West. He’ll notice if it’s gone.”

Cassie gripped it tighter. Now even she could hear the sounds of movement from outside.

Lewis let go of her in frustration as if scared to pull any harder and hurt her. 

“No. He’ll know. We have to get out of here!” He said.

She thought every curse word she wasn’t supposed to say as she put the spyglass back in the bin and dashed out of the plane behind Lewis. They flung themselves out and down the stairs, headlong, clanging into the metal, and threw themselves behind the nearest pontoon leg.

David Belfast strolled toward his plane, talking loudly into his cell phone, too distracted by his own plans to notice the two children crouching a few feet away from him or even the still vibrating stairs.

“No, nothing came out of this. I need another name. Somebody who’s not old and retired. Somebody good,” he said as he disappeared into plane. The conversation faded out of earshot. Lewis hauled Cassie forward into the nearest foliage the instant Belfast’s back disappeared. He pulled her through the brush, branches smacking their faces, fronds whipping around their arms. She stepped on a cactus with enough force to feel a sharp thorn embed itself in the sole of her shoe. In a self-preserving limp, she struggled to keep up with the insistent grip on her arm.

“Jesus, Lewis! Calm down,” she hissed, but he didn’t slow until they spilled back out into the open space in front of the grocery store. Under the lone flickering porch light, Lewis let go of her, his face twisted and furious, his fear visible under the anger.

“What the hell?” His voice shook as she reached down to pull the thick thorn from her shoe. “The first rule of stealing stuff is don’t get caught!”

“It was fine.” She swallowed hard, checked her pocket for the map. Her voice steadied when her fingers closed on the paper. “I wasn’t going to get caught.”

“You’re a pro now, huh? ‘Help me, Lewis, help me steal the map, I’ve never stolen anything.’” He mocked her voice, sending it high, and she flared angry too

“Shut up. Who’s snapping because they’re scared now?”

They glared at each other for a few long seconds, but Lewis extended the olive branch first. He breathed out a long, low sigh and then pushed her shoulder lightly, a joking attempt at levity he clearly did not fee.

“You’re right. You did scare me.” The corner of his mouth flipped up in a ghost of a smile. “But you got your map.”

“I did.” She thought of the spyglass, tossed in a crate in the back of the plane of someone completely unqualified for this hunt, and she opened the map again, certain the hatch marks would look just like the ones on the spyglass. She needed it to solve the map -- she was certain of it -- but there was no way she was talking Lewis into sneaking back onto the plane. This called for a little subterfuge.

She kicked a little sand up, forced herself to look down and back up again coyly. “I guess I’d better get back before my parents notice I’m gone.”

“Yeah. I guess you should.” He held out his hand for a handshake, eyes sparkling. The memory of that shared handshake earlier today -- was it really only today? -- felt old and familiar, a memory of a lifelong friend, not an acquaintance. “It was nice meeting you, Cassie Drake.”

Genuine sadness poked holes in her act. “You think you’re going to be gone?”

Lewis nodded. “Belfast told me he’d have to leave in the morning since he couldn’t find the pilot. I guess he told me because he’s going to let me tag along. I’m going to sleep in a hammock on the beach and then hitch my ride in the morning.”

“Pirate treasure, here you come,” Cassie said. She nibbled her lower lip and took his proffered hand. “It was nice meeting you too, Lewis…”

“Clark,” he said with a grin. 

“Lewis Clark,” she echoed. They parted, and she made in the direction of home, careful to walk far enough and casually enough not to arouse suspicion. Then she started her loop back. She was getting that spyglass, and she was cracking this code. Maybe then she would show her mom what she had accomplished; Mom was a softer touch about discipline than Dad.

Only as she moved back into the foliage did she realize Lewis had told her a lie. After all, what were the chances he was actually named Lewis Clark and wanted to be an explorer? She shook her head and missed him, even though that made no sense at all.

  
  


\-----------------------

  
  


Nate plummeted off a cliff outside Libertalia, grabbed frantically for his rope, and instead wrapped his hand around a snake hanging at his belt loop. It sunk its fangs into his hand as he hit the rocks below in hot, searing pain.

His eyes shot open.

“Shit.” He took stock of his reality: chest heaving up and down, sweat cold against hot skin, the darkness of his bedroom draped around him. He rolled toward Elena, blinked a few times, and took stock of her as well: body curled in a ball under the sheet, hair loose on the pillow, a small thin snore escaping. His nightmares came rarely these days, but when they did, it was the sight of her that reminded him he had created safety for himself, for her, for Cassie. Together they had built a life where he could sleep unarmed, where Elena rested so soundly she snored.

He licked his lips, clicked his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth. He eased his feet to the floor, not wanting to jar his wife awake, and made his way to the kitchen for water. He poured an iceless glass and gulped it down in three big drags. A hum caught his attention. His cell phone, plugged in on its spot on the counter, buzzed again. 

_ Thanks for the warning. Guy sounds like an ass. Gave Nadine heads up too. _ Nate could hear Chloe’s voice say the words in his head as he read them across the screen. He pressed the off button and started back to bed.

As he passed Cassie’s room, a chilly breeze licked around his feet. They often left their windows open here, but that air would wake her up shivering at some point. He opened her cracked door to shut the window for her.

Except Cassie wasn’t there. He realized it immediately yet still found himself grabbing at the sheets and comforter, ripping them off the bed, checking under them for the nothing he knew was there. Borne on the wings of a strange, terrible, ringing panic, he searched the house, fictionalizing scenarios in his head:  _ she woke up and moved to the couch, she’s in the other bathroom, she was feeling sick and went to wake us up and I just missed her. _

None of them proved true. 

He shook Elena awake with a gentle hand.

“What? What?” She jerked to consciousness in an instant, completely alert.

“Cassie’s gone.” 

She hit her feet in an instant. “Did you look on the couch? The bathroom?” She stopped herself, her blue eyes wide as her face fell. “Of course you did. Okay. Okay. Let’s…”

“I’m going to find Lewis.”

“What? You don’t think he…”

Nate interrupted. “I think he’s a vagabond kid who might be just the person to have my girl sneaking out her window.”

Elena’s shoulders relaxed, her face softened. “You think she snuck out.”

Nate hadn’t realized that was exactly what he thought until he had said it, but now he nodded.

“Yes.”

“Okay. Let’s go.” They got dressed in a blur, in a mix of pajamas and regular clothes, and made a rudimentary search plan for the island as they pulled on shoes. It boiled down to little more than ‘you go right, I’ll go left,’ but they set out with phones in hand and hearts in throat. Nate worked his way down the beach itself, tried to put himself in their shoes, and let himself put together the pieces for the first time. 

Coincidences exist, and fate is fickle as hell, but this time, Nate knew Belfast and Blackbeard’s treasure had to be at the root of this. Two strangers showing up on an island with 36 regular full-time residents had to be connected, and if Lewis was connected to Belfast and Cassie was connected to Lewis… Nate had no doubt she had overheard the Blackbeard conversation in the office earlier in the day. He glanced at his watch -- 2:36 a.m. -- and corrected his thought: yesterday, not today. With every step that carried him closer to the island's little landing strip, his stomach stretched and sank lower. 

He found Lewis asleep in a hammock, strung between two trees, shoes still on, hand dangling down holding his backpack strap tight, and Nate’s heart fell apart in his chest again. Cassie wasn’t here.

Lewis jerked awake as soon as as footsteps got close, and he leapt up, his eyes alert, his mouth a hard, straight line. His instant alertness bespoke time on the streets, time alone. He didn’t sleep the kind of sleep Nate had admired earlier. When he recognized Nate, Lewis relaxed.

“Have you seen Cassie?” Nate’s own voice rang in his ears, made unfamiliar by panic.

“She’s not home?” Lewis frowned when he saw Nate shake his head. His face changed first from surprise to fearful concern. Then his eyes changed with the slow darkening of someone having unpleasant realizations. “Oh no.”

Nate fought the urge to grab him by the shoulders, to turn him upside down and shake information from him like lunch money from a bullied child in the schoolyard.

“Tell me,” Nate said. He forced his breathing steady.

“We stole a copy of Belfast’s map from his plane earlier tonight. Cassie thought she could break the code. She was going to take it home. She _ told _ me she was going to take it home,” Lewis emphasized, and Nate nodded, offered him just enough reassurance to keep him talking. He sounded increasingly nervous. “But she was really interested in this telescope.”

“Was it still on the plane?” 

“Yes.” 

“Shit.” Nate started toward the airstrip at a steady jog, the confirmation of his fears rattling around in his brain. The bits of information -- Cassie thinking she could break codes, trying her hand at stealing -- rolled loose, unable to be analyzed right now. All he could do right now was thank God for Lewis’s almost foolhardy honesty, his unwillingness to lie for even his own self-preservation. He could have feigned ignorance, pretended he last saw Cassie at dinner, but it wasn’t in the kid to lie. To steal seemed to be another matter.

Though he could hear Lewis’s feet alongside him, glance over to see him keeping pace, he couldn’t split his focus right now to send him away. He could worry about that after he had gotten to the plane, taken hold of his little treasure hunter, and dragged her back home where she belonged. 

Except the plane wasn’t there when he pushed through the foliage. The emptiness of the landing strip made him an ominous promise. 

“He’s gone,” Lewis whispered as if he couldn’t believe it.

“Where?” 

“Saint Lucia. That’s where he thinks the treasure is.”

“Shit.” Nate reached for his phone. He needed a pilot, and he needed one now.


	3. Chapter 3

Nathan Drake finished reorganizing his duffel and appreciated the distraction of preparation. Worrying about Cassie had taken a backseat to getting ready to chase her down. After the nasty surprise of the empty runway, he had thanked Lewis for his honesty and rushed home. Elena met him at the door with his bag packed, the phone number and arrival time for a pilot she had already arranged, and a promise to follow as soon as she knew for certain Cassie was not nearby.

“We’ll be back soon,” he had said.

“I know. I love you,” she had replied.

He loved her for the forced optimism in her eyes and for kissing him goodbye with a smile that only wobbled a little. When he had checked his bag, he hadn’t been surprised to find she included everything he would need and even some things he prayed he wouldn’t.

Now in the quiet of the plane, he fingered the worn, familiar leather of his shoulder holster, traced the NDI, and hoped for benign. His instincts pushed him in one direction and pulled him in another.

On one hand, he knew the most likely _worst_ case scenario was that Cassie had accidentally stowed away on Belfast’s plane and would be discovered like a young rapscallion upon landing. But a place of deeper fear inside of him worried she had gone on purpose, that she would be following the reckless footsteps of a treasure map into the teeth of professional seekers.

Of course Elena was home for the best case scenario, the improbable “She fell asleep somewhere silly and unlikely that we are all going to laugh about in five years.” Nate knew damn well it wasn’t that one. He also knew damn well Elena would be calling Sully and Sam, in that order, if Cassie wasn’t located in the next few hours, and he knew he would catch hell from them, even if by then he already had her safely back in his custody. They were stupid in love with his little girl.

In spite of the circumstances -- a missing daughter, an illegal treasure hunt, an overpaid, under-experienced pilot in the cockpit of a seaplane -- he embraced the adrenaline racing through him. His adrenal system had always pumped out the right kind of fuel for survival performance, and he figured he had passed that along to his daughter. For a few minutes, the fears, worries, and anxieties died down to a whisper inside of him, and he got back to work.

He spread the map of Saint Lucia out on his lap and plucked one of his pencils from his pocket. Any search area would have to be somewhere outside of civilization but close enough to be worth accessing by seafarers. Soufrière, the island’s original French capital, had the port access, the old plantation estates, and the proximity to Saint Lucia’s mountainous region. If Belfast was following a professional, the pro would have started on that end of the island unless the map itself indicated something different. Without knowing, Nate had gambled on Soufrière. The pilot was going to drop him and go back to his real job, spotting fish schools from the air, with a chunk of cash in hand and no questions asked.

Nate folded the map and tucked it into his pocket, wishing for an instant he had a fresh journal, just in case. He closed his eyes and leaned back. The instant after, he had that strange sensation of having seen something not meant to be there. He opened his eyes again.

There it was: a backpack, tucked against the back wall. The small black bag had orange piping along its straps, and he had seen it before.

“Oh hell,” he muttered before letting his voice reach a normal volume. “You might as well come out. I know you’re here.”

Seconds ticked by. Just when he began to worry Lewis had hidden away in the wheel well or somewhere dangerous, Nate watched the kid unfold himself from behind the emergency parachutes. He moved stiffly, his muscles tight from spending nearly three hours packed into a tiny ball, but his defiance boasted itself on his face.

"Do any planes take off without extra kids on them?" Nate asked the ceiling irritably.

“I’m coming with you,” Lewis said. “Cassie might be in trouble, and it might be my fault.”

Nate wanted to disagree with him on principle, but he knew the kid, at this point, was right. Lewis would be coming with him because he couldn’t very well let a teenager loose without even a passport in a foreign country, especially not a teenager who had been bitten by the treasure bug. He’d be dead or indoctrinated within a week.

He examined Lewis once more, the thin, steely set of his jaw and the flinty glint in his eye, and Nate’s gut clenched.

“You’re coming because you’re here already and I need to keep an eye on you.” He softened. “But whatever’s happening with Cassie isn’t your fault. You said it yourself. You thought she had gone home safe and sound.”

“How do you even know I told you the truth?” Lewis puffed with the bravado of a man, but Nate saw through its long cracks to the boy beneath. Nate half-chuckled, even though nothing was funny.

“You’re not much of a liar, pal, and I mean that as a compliment. You’ve been shooting straight with me. You didn’t lie.”

“I didn’t walk her home myself.” The lightest of comments made with the heaviest of weights hanging from it it. Nate wished for Sully, wished for the wisdom only Victor Sullivan had when it came to easing guilt and putting lives back together. Sully would have rolled out some advice, some interesting knowledge, around the cigar in his mouth, and Lewis would have lightened. Nate didn’t have the gift.

“It’s a safe island where she’s lived for years. You had no reason to.”

Lewis sighed and didn’t respond, so Nate tried an angle that worked better for him. He pointed at the ratty backpack.

“That thing waterproof?”

“No…”

“Damn shame.”

“Why?”

“Because our way off this plane isn’t exactly going to be on land,” Nate said. “Couldn’t get landing permissions together that fast.”

“Really?” Lewis’s eyes glittered with sudden excitement. Nate had seen that same expression in the mirror more times than he could count and didn’t know whether to feel affinity or pity for the kid.

“Yeah. Hope you can swim.”

“Sweet.” Lewis dragged the ee’s out to three syllables, his guilt momentarily forgotten.

  


\------------------

 

Cassie Drake regretted everything.

Well, maybe not everything, but she regretted a whole lot of her decisions in the last 24 hours.

She squinted down at her watch to confirm her assessment, but its broken face taunted her timelessly. Oh yes, she had thought she was slick, sneaking onto the plane in spite of Belfast being in the cockpit, sliding the spyglass into her hoodie and shivering as its cold metal touched her skin. Then she had felt the unmistakable sensation of takeoff and panicked, jumped into a relatively safe hiding spot between two crates.

The safe hiding spot had been discoverable upon landing, and from there, everything had snowballed miserably. Caught redhanded with the map and the spyglass, Cassie had stammered through a tearful lie claiming her innocence, then had tried name-dropping her father, and then had realized that mistake. Afraid she would be followed, afraid Nathan Drake was out to steal his treasure, afraid a preteen girl’s overprotective parents would call Saint Lucian authorities, he had snatched her up and dragged her out into the middle of the jungle. She suspected she would be haunted by the coldness entering Belfast’s eyes for the rest of her life.

Yet even so, she didn’t realize she had been kidnapped until he locked her in the Port-a-Potty on the edge of the dig site and left her there. Even when the door latched shut, it still didn’t feel real.

“We’ll let her go when we’re done here,” she heard Belfast tell someone else. “A couple of days won’t kill her, and we’ll have what we came for.”

Even in the first few minutes of jiggling door handles and rocking side to side, it hadn’t felt real.

It felt real now.

She pressed her legs out in front of her as far as she could. She sat on the toilet, breathing in the rancid, putrid stink of other people’s bowel movements. She gave the door another half-hearted kick -- as if she hadn’t been doing that very thing since being locked in here -- and found it immovable as ever. Her head hurt from the fumes, and her heels hurt from banging them against the door.

Tears pricked at her eyes, and she missed her mom and her dad with a bone-deep ache. Right now, she would take anything she could get: one of Dad’s stupid puns, one of Mom’s lectures, anything at all. She closed her eyes and wished for the holy hell she would get when they found her.

“I won’t even zone out during the 'You have to think' speech this time,” she murmured to herself, letting the hot tears fall. She cried herself into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep.

  


\----------------------

  


Nate cursed himself for not thinking this one through.

Swimming ashore, through the crash of ocean waves and rip tides, had little in common with most people’s answer to the question “Can you swim?” He could see Lewis working hard, arms and legs moving in the right pattern but getting nowhere. The drop had been easy enough, straight down from the plane at a safe distance into warm water, but the shock to an inexperienced system had undone the ease.

“Go under.” Nate advised over the rushing roar of the water. He fumbled in his bag, hands seeking stability in the churning water. When he wrapped his hand around his rope, he managed to flick it out toward Lewis.  “Swim below the waves and don’t let go of this. Pull hard if you get in trouble. I’ll get you out.”

Lewis nodded wordlessly, grabbed the lifeline, and dove. Nate started toward shore himself with strong, purposeful strokes. The rope tugged tight a few times but never hard enough to scare him, and by the time, he reached rough sand with his feet, he looked back to see Lewis bobbling up for air and then diving back below. Nate applied helpful pull to the rope to help Lewis arrive faster. Lewis came onto shore in a tired crawl, grinning in spite of his panting.

“We jumped out of a plane.” He said reverently, unable to believe his own good fortune. His voice then pitched up to an enthusiastic holler. “Mr. Drake, we jumped out of a freakin’ plane!”

“Yeah.” Nate shot him a sideways look but realized the infectious energy had gotten him too. He grinned back. “Now let’s get to work.”

They hiked the mile in to the city in their wet clothes, bags slung over their shoulders. Lewis walked too close to Nate and asked a million questions.

“So pirates in the Caribbean weren’t really from the Caribbean, were they? Where were they from?”

“All over Europe. Colonization wasn’t just a legal exercise. Anything that was being done legally was also being done illegally. Take the slave trade. Pirates didn’t just traffic in shiny stuff.”

“No way.”

He would think he had finally stunned him into quiet, but Lewis processed quickly, moving from basic facts to more challenging questions Nate couldn’t always answer. Nate had to admit it felt good to be stumped.

"You could Google it," Lewis suggested after a question about pirates from China in the 18th Century.

"No. I couldn't."

"You don't have a smartphone?"

"I'm my own smartphone," Nate said.

"Not if you don't know anything about Chinese pirates," Lewis said, his voice chipper and without malice. 

"Point taken. I'll look it up when I get home."

Soufrière bustled and teemed with life, a coral reef of human proportions, too busy to notice an unusual, wet pair. Catholicism winked at Nate from every direction; crucifixes, cathedrals, and street vendors with handmade rosaries. They walked past a church of the Blessed Virgin bearing the inscription _In saecula saeculorum_. Nate contemplated crossing himself for old time’s sake.

“What does that mean?” Lewis pointed.

“Forever and ever.”

“Like the church is going to last forever and ever?”

Nate nodded, shifted his duffel bag over to his other shoulder. “It’s a liturgy ending. Usually comes before the amen. Originally, it was added to ensure new believers understood the permanent implications of their beliefs. Many of the early Christians were Gentile pagans, not Jews, and had spent years dealing with lighter weight, more malleable religion.”

“Do you think it’s real?”

“Dangerous question, pal.” Nate shuddered at the memory of Sister Katherine, half-certain she would rise from the grave and smack him upside the head for saying anything except yes. “Just learn as much as you can about as much as you can, and then you can decide for yourself.”

“Does Cassie know a lot about this stuff?”

Nate ignored the squeeze of his heart in his chest. “Catholicism?”

“No. Just stuff. History and stuff.”

“Yup.” He watched Lewis’s face fall and added, “She’s had a lot of opportunity to learn it. It’s not exactly taught in school. All the best history never makes it to the textbooks.”

“I’m going to learn it all,” Lewis said fiercely. Nate watched the wiry chest puff out and half-believed him. He opened his mouth to reply, but his phone buzzed in his pocket, a waterproof connection to home. He knew it was Elena before he even picked it up.

“Hey. Whatcha got?” He asked.

“I’ve found Belfast’s flight record in the database. You were right. He flew into Soufrière, and that’s not the only trail he’s left behind. He’s bought out a whole wing of The Downtown. It’s a hotel on Bridge Street.”

“Sounds like the place to start. Keep your phone on, okay?”

“Are you kidding? I’m going to be married to it, cowboy. I won’t even pee without it in my hand.”

“At least put it down to wipe,” he replied. “Talk to you soon.”

“You better. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

He hung up and nudged Lewis with his elbow. “We’re headed to a hotel on Bridge Street. C’mon.”

Though the walk was easy enough, by the time they got to the hotel front, their half-damp clothes had chafed them both to the point of discomfort. Nate bought them each a cup of coffee at a dingy cafe across from the hotel just to earn them bathroom privileges and kept an eye out the window while Lewis changed. The kid emerged in damp swim trunks, the same shirt, and the same wet shoes.

“You were right about the waterproof bag thing. I’ll get one for my next adventure.”

“It’s handy.” Nate stood up. “Listen, look right out this window at the hotel. I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t stop looking.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He sounded offended. “I’m going to help you get Cassie back.”

“Aren’t I lucky?” Nate mumbled to himself as stepped into the bathroom. In clean jeans and a fresh shirt, he felt like a new man. He paused with his fingers on the leather of his shoulder holster, thought about shrugging it on empty, just in case, but changed his mind. He strolled back out into the cafe.

Lewis had finished both cups of coffee -- without asking, Nate noted irritably -- and already his voice jittered when he spoke, grabbing Nate’s arm.

“I recognize one of the guys who just pulled out of hotel parking in a work van!” His excited whisper rang too loud in the small space. He withered under Nate’s chastising look and lowered his voice. “It’s definitely one of Belfast’s guys.”

“C’mon.” Nate grabbed both of their bags, unwilling to be slowed down by inexperience, and headed for the lot. Up ahead, he could see the work van Lewis had seen, waiting patiently to make a left-hand turn on a busy street, and relief surged through his nerves. Patience and traffic law obedience boded well; mercenaries had neither.

He perused his options in the hotel parking lot: a few sedate sedans, a work truck for an HVAC company, and a Jeep rigged out for sightseeing tours. He grinned in spite of himself; that was their ticket. The Smith family from the American Midwest could call and complain to the rental company to get another.

He hopped over the open side into the driver’s seat, tossed the bags in the backseat.

“I’ll be damned.” He smacked his hand against the dashboard triumphantly. “They left the keys in it.”

He gunned the gas to back out of the parking space almost without realizing Lewis had kept right up, sitting eagerly in the passenger’s seat looking like he was going on a family vacation.

They caught up with the work van too easily, no skill or subterfuge necessary, and Nate followed at an safe distance. The ease could not distract him from the uncertainty. He still didn’t know where Cassie was, had no way of knowing for certain that this was even necessary. She might be sitting in the Saint Lucian police station about to make a phone call home, explaining the whole mixup to helpful officers. His instincts hummed their opposition to that idea; she was out here somewhere.

He remembered being Cassie’s age. Inevitable, he supposed, in the face of danger. He could still smell the flowers outside the old lady’s house, hear the rubbery thud of his shoes on the roof as he ran from cops behind his brother, ripped up from the inside out by his first brushes with death. Those moments had changed the course of his entire life. His puberty had not come in a rush of hormones and awkward first kisses; no, it had been puberty by trial, baptism by fire. The man he became had stepped out of the jeopardy of his youth.

He didn’t want that for Cassie. If she was going to choose wanderlust and adventure, he wanted her to do so like her mother. Or, at least, like her mother had done before meeting him. Elena Fisher was one very smart cookie with a weakness for a cocky treasure hunter. The memory made him smile.

Then he glanced over at Lewis Not-An-Orphan, No-Last-Name in a foreign country counting on Nathan Drake to keep him alive. Here was another kid going through it, whatever the hell it was.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Lewis asked.

Nate shifted, reached into his back pocket, and pulled out the map of Saint Lucia. “Check it out. You tell me.”

The kid frowned down at the paper. He smoothed it under his fingers against the dashboard, furrowed his brows, traced Nate’s notes and lines with his fingers. By the time Lewis had it held up in the air, eyes squinted against the bite of the sun, Nate opened his mouth to just tell him the answer.

“I got it!” Lewis dropped the map down to his lap. “We’re going to be here.”

Nate glanced over to see Lewis’s finger right on the Petit Piton marker.

“Yes, we are,” Nate said. “So you’ve never read a map before.”

“Nope. I figured it out though.”

“Most thieves need to know how to read a map. Belfast should have included that in his interview questions.” The tone invited explanation, opened a door for answers. Lewis swallowed roughly.

“There wasn’t much of an application process.” He looked out the other side of the car, and Nate knew he had poked a raw wound of some sort. The silence condemned Nate for prying, so he contented himself with driving and pointing out geographical features along the way. His knowledge of botany paled in comparison to his knowledge of archaeology, but Lewis didn’t seem to mind. His smile snapped back to his face within minutes, and he once again rattled off more questions than anyone had ever wanted to answer.

Nearly a mile after any semblance of a road disappeared, Nate saw the worksite up ahead. He whipped the Jeep sideways through brush and grass, leaving behind even the slightest of paths. Lewis ducked under a massive low-hanging tree branch.

“Shit.”

“Hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Nate enjoyed his own cliche as he dropped them over a teeth-chattering, bone-jarring ledge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Cassie. I promise we'll start with her next time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I appreciate each and every kudos! I can reply to comments to say thank you, but I don't have a way to let each person who clicks that little button know I appreciate it. Just accept this blanket gratitude!

David Belfast opened the door of the Port-a-Potty with a knife and a paper bag both clenched in his right fist.

Cassie blinked against the unexpected light and recognized the expression on his face: fear. If she had not been exhausted, frightened, and stiff, she might have wanted to laugh at him for thinking she could or would attack him. Instead her thoughts moved sluggishly from their hibernation. Even thinking began to feel useless after long enough in dark silence.

Belfast stared until he could see the upper hand he still held, and then he fumblingly put the knife in a sheath at his belt. His grey poncho hooded his face, the rain drizzling down over its peak and wetting his nose.

“I brought you dinner.” He held out the bag. Her pride begged her not to reach for it, but her stomach growled a long, low rumble. She closed her fist around the offered bag.

“Thank you,” she said automatically, instinctively, years of mom’s manners coming to terrible fruition. Anger whirled up through her hungry stomach, up through her chest, into her throat like a fire. She wasn’t grateful. Not to this piece-of-shit, two-bit treasure hunter in so far over his head that kidnapping felt justified. Not even the smell from the bag -- spicy-sweet and unfamiliar -- could override the stink of his desperation.

When he began to close the door, she leapt to her feet. “Wait!”

He paused, his eyes wide. “What?”

She glared. _If I were braver, I’d try to take that knife from you and stab you in your stupid, fat stomach_ , she thought. But instead she deliberately, carefully, repositioned her face, smoothing herself from gargoyle to girl once more.

“Let me help.” She forced her voice steady, careful not to reveal her icy terror of him closing that door again and leaving her in timeless, cramped isolation.

“I don’t need a kid’s help,” Belfast shot back. Another drop of rain grew heavy enough to fall from the tip of his nose.

“I’m not just a kid, and you know it. I’ve been working with my…” She considered the likely misogyny of this man and chose just the parent he would respect. “Working with my dad for years. I can help you find the treasure.”

Belfast maintained his position in front of the door, blocking her escape, but he shifted his weight from left to right. “You’re just a kid, and you have no reason to help.”

She straightened up and met his gaze. “I’m trying to make a deal. You let me stay out of here, and I’ll help you find the treasure. I recognize some of the sigils on the map from my dad’s work.”

He hesitated.

She plowed on, unperturbed. “If I help you find the treasure, you have to get me on a plane back home. I won’t tell anybody about you. I’ll say I made a mistake and got lost. I’ll play dumb.”

In the seconds that followed, as he stared her down and she stared him right back, she made silent prayers and deals with her lower lip, begging it not to tremble. She stuck her chin up a bit higher. He relented.

“Okay.” He sighed. “Okay. Come on. I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

She followed him from the Port-a-Potty on shaky legs, the food bag tucked under her hoodie to keep it dry, and tried to memorize her surroundings. Snippets of advice from the adults in her life floated to her.

_“It’s never worth dying for. You have to know when to walk away.”_

_“Case everywhere. Always know who and what is where you are. That’s just smart, Cassy-Pants.”_

_“Listen, babe, you always want to keep an Ace in your back pocket. Trust me.”_

_“People usually make assumptions. If you pretend to match those assumptions, they’ll keep their guard down. That’s how you get them to really talk.”_

_“The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go!”_

The latter came from her favorite Dr. Seuss book, read to her many times by every adult who had ever cared about her. Of course she didn’t remember most of the readings, but the stories had imprinted themselves in the family lore, told and retold at holiday gatherings until her cheeks burned. She used to bring the book into bed with her when she would sneak between her parents, asking for a second bedtime story in the wee hours of the morning. She used to sit on the toilet while Sam took a shower and recited it for her as she turned the pages in glee, amazed that he truly could “read with his eyes shut.” Sully had bought her a new copy after he accidentally burned a cigar out on the cover of her first one.

Tears tickled at the back of her throat, but she pushed them down.

They reached a small encampment, makeshift tents erected from heavy tarps, and she ducked her head to count the people under them as they passed. Maybe eight men in total, all white and English-speaking if the chatter could be trusted, lingered beneath four tents. They watched her pass with hooded eyes, judgment in their gazes, and she couldn’t decide whether she or Belfast was the recipient.

Belfast motioned under the last tarp in the line and took a seat on an upended plastic crate. She did the same.

“You can eat first.”

She barely let him get the words out before she ripped into the wet paper bag and snarfed down the dish inside, a spicy mixture of bananas and salted fish. Without embarrassment or self-consciousness, she ate every bite, and dragged her index finger through the plastic container to catch the last bits of sauce. She licked it clean and repeated the process, buying herself time to think.

Should she try to escape? Wait until darkness and just run off into this imperious rainforest? Should she try to genuinely help him find the treasure, show him the connections between the spyglass and the map, and hope he would hold up his end of their deal?

Should she just buy time in hopes that someone bigger and stronger would come rescue her?

The thought “What would Mom do?” surprised her. Her whole childhood, she had been Daddy’s girl, following him around the house, copying his walk, his talk, his love of history over the contemporary. She had always been secretly proud to be a Drake, a _real_ Drake, while Elena only pretended to be a Drake every once in a while to bring that burning glow to Dad’s eyes. But in this moment, Cassie wondered what her smart, competent mother would do.

What she wouldn’t do was wait around hoping Dad would save her.

Belfast watched Cassie as she ate, and she admitted to herself reluctantly that she did not feel threatened. All girls know the prickly, uncomfortable sensation of being watched, of men’s eyes allowing their imaginations to twist young bodies into obscene fantasies. David Belfast’s gaze seemed entirely innocuous. His eyes didn’t develop that sinister glint until he began to talk about the treasure in fevered, eager tones.

As he laid out the information he had, sticking an umbrella into the gap of a plastic crate and opening his laptop under it, her stomach sank. The chances of him letting her out of his sight to sneak away after giving her access to this information… well, it wasn’t good.

“We’ve opened up two dig sites based on this formation here.” He pointed to a mountain-like shape on the scan of the map. “We’re here before the other people, but we’re pretty blind. Once we got word they thought the treasure was on Saint Lucia, we came straight here.”

Unconsciously, Cassie’s brain leapt from the dilemma of escape to the map itself. She motioned Belfast off of his stool to let her see the computer more clearly, and startled, he acquiesced. The sigils and notches on the map, matched the photograph of the spyglass still stuck in her mind. Cassie flipped the image on the computer, clicking the touchpad with sticky, damp fingers.

“I’ve got something,” she said, a slow, proud grin sliding across her face.

Those were the only true words she said to David Belfast that evening.

  


\-----------------------

  


Until long after squinting in the dark gave him a headache, Nathan searched for Cassie in and around the dig site. Old muscle memory carried him through crouches, rolling dives behind equipment, the stillness of being right in someone’s eyesight but unseen. His own skill did not surprise him, but the ease with which Lewis managed the same feats did. The gawky kid transformed inside his skin once they entered the site. At one point, he hung from the open back door of a work van, feet pulled up out of view, to avoid being seen, and while he did it, hands carefully gripping thin metal and rubber, he actually grinned back at Nate, actually gave him a damn thumbs up.

Only once the rain moved from light drizzle to insistent pelting did they leave the dig site, confident the workers included neither Belfast nor Cassie and would not be working any more tonight.

Back at their borrowed Jeep, Nate pulled a tarp from his bag, muttered a silent thank you to his wife, and pitched it over the open top. Of course they were still wet, cold, and discouraged, but small blessings could be blessings nonetheless. Nate tossed Lewis a slightly squashed sleeve of crackers and pulled out a jar of peanut butter and a knife. They dug in unceremoniously, Nate eating just enough to knock the edge off his hunger and Lewis eating the rest and looking around eagerly until Nate handed him a second sleeve.

Nate pulled his phone out of his bag, flipped it open, and punched in Elena’s number from memory rather than going through contacts.

“Nate?” she greeted him in a single breath, rushing out at once.

“Not yet,” he said, letting the weight of their shared disappointment and fear settle between them. “I’ve found Belfast’s guys, but not him, not yet.”

“I’m going to go ahead and get my ticket, get there legally, in case we need someone on that front.”

“Good idea.” He sighed hard. “Hey, gotta tell you something.”

“Okay?”

“Lewis snuck onto that flight you got me.”

“Jesus Christ, Nate. Is he okay?”

Nate stole a look at Lewis downing crackers, openly listening, completely oblivious to the fact he was eavesdropping.

“He’s fine. I’ve got him with me.”

“Well,” she hesitated. “Keep him safe.”

He knew what they were both feeling, the strange sort of guilt of caring for another child while your own flesh and blood kid might be hurt, hungry, scared, alone.

“I will. See you soon.” They both murmured their love, let the words link them together across the ocean waters, until the hang up didn’t feel like separation. Nate expected to see Lewis aghast and awkward, much like Cassie when faced with the terrifying knowledge that her parents romanced each other. Instead the kid looked thoughtful.

“You two love each other, huh?”

It would be easy to be flip, toss off this question with a platitude, a joke. Men preferred that to talking about the mysterious, beautiful needs and wants of love. Nate loved his wife in a million ways -- he would have died for her without hesitation, thrown himself in front of any bullet, dived off any cliff after her -- and even he never talked about that love unless his hours had been soaked in alcohol or death. He remembered the first time he got drinks with Sam after finding Avery’s treasure, both of them knocking back too many shots for middle-aged men, and Sam complaining over breakfast the next mid-morning: “Seriously, little brother, I need a dentist’s appointment. You rotted my teeth out with all that sugar. ‘She’s the best of all my finds.’ I’m disgusted.”

Men just knew when they were in love and when they weren’t. It didn’t require a lot of conversation.

But he looked now at Lewis, his thin face intent, his eyes asking, and Nate answered honestly, “We picked each other years ago, and we’ve just kept on choosing each other every day since.”

“That’s really cool,” Lewis said wistfully. “I bet Cassie hates it. You probably kiss and stuff around the house.”

Nate definitely did not feel comfortable talking about _stuff_ with Lewis. “She probably thinks she hates it,” he agreed amicably.

“I’m ready to find her.”

The honesty socked Nate right in the chest. “Me too.”

He steered their conversation in a new direction, let Lewis talk him into telling one of his stories -- “No, one of the _big_ ones. Cassie said you have _big_ stories.” -- and he told it until the kid fell asleep in the passenger seat of the Jeep, wet hair plastered to his head and cracker crumbs on his lap, looking years younger than he was.

Nate took a swig from his canteen, peered out into the rainy darkness, and considered the situation. Here at this dig site, they had seen maybe ten men, digging into the side of Petit Piton, looking for some entrance to a secret world masquerading as a crevice. These men chattered in a French patois, moved around the site slowly, without urgency. These men, not treasure hunters but locals, had all the hurry of hourly employees when the boss is on vacation. Belfast hadn’t been to this site in hours, but he wasn’t the kind of man to step away from the operation, not if he was the kind of man to fly to a remote Florida Key seeking help.

So there had to be another site. Nate reached into his back pocket for his map only to realize Lewis still had it in the glove compartment. Not wanting to wake the kid from his first sleep in 24 hours, he reached slowly over to open the compartment. Lewis jumped, hazy eyes flying open, body scrambling backward to get away.

“Please don’t!” The words tumbled out in a sleepy panic, too loud, too frightened, and in the bleary, blinking seconds that followed, Nate stared at Lewis, and Lewis stared back. His location came back to him slowly, dawned on his face alongside the revelation he accidentally offered up. Unsure what else to do, Nate clapped him on the shoulder, sunk his fingers just a little into the lean muscle there, just enough to ground him in right now.

Even a Saint Lucian jungle in the pouring rain, searching for a missing girl, seemed to be better than wherever Lewis had just been.

“I just need the map,” Nate explained gently, opening the glove compartment.

“I thought you were…”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

“Okay.”

They fell silent, Nate opening the map and Lewis pretending to sleep again, though his breathing had a clear, steady alertness. _I’ll figure you out later_ , Nate thought. Right now, he needed the map and enough logical assumption to get him to wherever Belfast was. His phone rang in his pocket; he answered.

“I’m on the way, Nathan.”

“Sam, whoa. Calm down. I’m…”

“Elena said you flew into Soufrière.”

“Yes.” Nate sagged, torn between irritation at Sam’s pessimism and relief at the thought of Sam showing up, guns blazing, ready to take out any threat between him and his niece.

“I’ll be there soon. Call you when we land.”

“We?” And Nate knew instantly. In the background, he heard a cough and a sarcastic comment about planes not flying themselves. “Nevermind. Of course. Tell Sully I’ll see you both soon.”

“We’ll find her.”

“I know.”

Sam never said goodbye before he hung up, and Nate never hung up first. Silly, perhaps, but the ritual rose out of their years apart. Once they had been denied goodbyes and Nate had left without knowing what had happened to Sam. He supposed on some level neither was willing to risk it again.

He turned his attention back to the map, pored over it, waiting for inspiration, a sign to leap from the blue and green ink. Lewis fell back asleep, genuinely, even offering up a few snorts in his slumber, and Nate’s own exhaustion pressed on his eyelids. Finally he gave in to their request and laid back. He had always been good at sleeping in the field, and he had too much experience to doubt the importance of catching a few zzz’s. People who thought you couldn’t fall asleep in the middle of chaos didn’t understand the great equalizer of sleep deprivation; it robbed you of your ability to prioritize.

Less than an hour passed until he lurched awake to a familiar popping noise in the distance. He and Lewis exchanged looks.

It seemed both of them recognized the sound of gunshots.

 


	5. Chapter 5

Nate lifted his binoculars to his eyes and saw David Belfast, wearing a stupid grey poncho, talking to another man. He didn’t see Cassie, and he didn’t see any evidence of a firefight. The rain had faded out to overcast clouds, illuminated by silvery moonlight.

“She’s gotta be there, Mr. Drake,” Lewis whispered. “We’ve got to go in.”

“Hold on.”  He kept watching through the binoculars: Belfast shifted below one of the tarps, talking to someone; one of the other men walked along, a flash of a gun visible at his hip. Nate frowned. “Look. The gun’s holstered, and no one’s shooting. There’s only three of them.”

He held out the binoculars for Lewis, turned his head, but the kid was already gone. He turned back to see Lewis moving through the vegetation at a surprisingly steady clip.

“Shit.” Nate reached into his bag, shrugged on his shoulder holster, and slipped his 9mm into its place. “This kid’s trying to kill me.”

He followed, frustrated he could no longer see Lewis or the camp as he descended. If he’d had time to teach Lewis a thing or two, the kid would know damn well that you never went in stupid. You always picked an entry you could control. You didn’t pick the option of barreling over a blind hill after something that might not even be there. Stealth mattered.

Angry voices kicked up in earshot but out of sight.

“Hey, you, you can’t be here!” A man’s voice. The sound of scrambling feet ground.

“Cassie?” Lewis’s searching voice became frantic. “Cassie!”

Nate broke into a full-fledged run before he even heard Cassie’s answering, “Lewis?!”

“Wait, put that gun away! It’s not an intruder. It’s the kid you hired in Key West.” Cassie’s voice went straight through him, turned his insides to ice. Nate hit another stride as he cleared the hill to see a man pointing a gun at the kids. Lewis stood, hands up, body stiff, and there in front of him, Cassie stood fearlessly, having put herself between her friend and danger.

Nathan Drake had killed lots of people, but he had never wanted to. Right now, he forced his hands not to go to his own gun, forced himself not to slaughter the man who would dare to hold his daughter at gunpoint. Instead he hit him from the side, took him down hard enough his own ribs creaked on impact.

He grabbed the man’s head between his hands. He slammed it into the ground. Once. Twice. Thrice. On the third blow, the body went completely limp.

Drawn to the commotion, another man ran at Nate, reaching for his waistband. Nate dropped his shoulder.

“Gotta decide if you’re gonna charge or shoot,” he said.

The man hit the ground, barely had time to breathe out a groan of pain before Nate’s boot knocked him out. Two men incapacitated. One to go.

Except Nate saw no one.

“Dad?” Cassie’s voice melted from strong to vulnerable. She threw herself across the space between them, leapt into his arms like a little girl, hung herself around his neck. He wrapped her tight and fought to breathe as relief flooded him, relief so overwhelming it came like a monsoon to every inch of him, filling him so it even welled up in his eyes.

When she said his name the second time, against his neck, her small voice made it a grateful prayer. “Dad.”

He wanted to say her name, promise to keep her safe, yell at her for scaring him like that, ask her what had happened, but his throat had closed up tight. He just squeezed her harder.

“I knew she was here, Mr. Drake!” Lewis was saying, his voice falsely bright, his face stark and pale even in the moonlight.

As if drawn out by his voice, Cassie let go of her father. In turn, he reluctantly loosened his grip, letting her slide back down to the ground. She turned to Lewis.

“Are you okay?” She asked as if she hadn’t also been in front of the gun. Lewis nodded.

“Are you?”

Cassie laughed tearfully. “I will be now.”

She stepped back under Nate’s arm, and he held her there again, grateful to have her back, not ready to give up the warm solidity of her being _right here_ ** _._ ** When she had the flu as a toddler, he had slept with her on his chest every night for two weeks, listening to her heartbeat and the sickly struggle of her lungs. Whenever Elena had tried to offer him a break, send him to get some restful sleep, he had struggled to articulate why he needed to be right there every second: “I can’t know she’s okay if I’m not with her.”

Now, when his throat finally eased enough to let him speak, his words came out quiet but sure: “You’re grounded forever.”

He groped out with one free hand, clapped Lewis on the shoulder. “You too.”

“You can’t ground me,” Lewis replied, startled.

“I just did.”

Nate stood there a long time, one arm wrapped around Cassie, one hand holding Lewis steady. His heart opened and stretched and grew until it filled his entire chest, a balloon threatening to pop against his ribcage.

They all heard the crashing sounds, the breaking branches and squelching mud of someone running away, but this time, Nate ignored it. David Belfast was neither warlord nor secret society leader nor murderer. This time, he had no villain to chase into the forested overgrowth.

He had what he came for.

  


\-----------------------

  


In the Soufrière hotel room, Cassie took a forty minute shower in scalding hot water. She sunk her fingers into her scalp and scrubbed the flowery shampoo through her hair, washed her face three times with the same soap, and wondered if she would feel better when she emerged, wondered if she could scrub away the hollow ache in her stomach.

She had always flaunted her own toughness. When her Kindergarten teacher shrieked over a hairy spider and a boy offered to kill it, Cassie had leapt up and used her paper to take the little creature outside. When a terrible storm kicked up while her family sailed to a nearby island, she had stayed on deck despite her parents’ frustrated protests. She proudly waved the banner of bravery every day.

So why was she so scared now? Nothing had happened to her. Not really. At least that was what she kept telling herself over and over. She unwrapped the little hotel toothbrush and brushed her teeth until her gums bled. She told herself she felt better once she was clean.

After she pulled on the spare clothes her mom had apparently packed, she walked back out into the main hotel room. On the balcony, her dad spoke on the phone in low whispers, still smiling, still glowing from the inside out. She could hear snippets through the open sliding glass door, her dad telling her mom to cancel her ticket because Sully and Sam would fly them all home.

At the hotel room desk, Lewis stood, still damp, blow-drying his wet spare clothes and watching an infomercial on pressure cookers. Cassie watched him for a few minutes, nearly laughed at the seriousness on his face as he smoothed wrinkles out and toggled with the settings on the cheap hairdryer.

“You know that’s going to take hours,” she said, and he turned to her with a wide smile.

“Yeah, but that means in a few hours, I’ll have dry clothes. I haven’t been dry since we jumped out of the plane.”

“Damn. You jumped out of a plane?”

Lewis waffled. “Well kinda. We weren’t very high up. But we had to swim to shore.”

Despite herself, she was impressed this time. “I know my dad didn’t bring you along on purpose.”

“Nope. I snuck onto the plane. Figured you might need help.”

Her heart did a slow tumble, a careful somersault, at the matter-of-fact way he presented his reason.

“I did. Thanks.”

“No problem.” He grinned again, tilted his head to the side. “I mean, did you see me come blasting down there to find you? That was pretty heroic.”

She laughed. “My hero.”

“Exactly. Now help a hero out and get the other blow dryer out of the closet. I’m going to either sleep in dry clothes or nothing.”

“Oh gross.” She obliged though, opening the closet and finding another bagged hair dryer. She unfurled the cord, plugged it in, and joined him.

It was nice. Her dad came in, teased them both about the ridiculousness of what they were doing, changed into his own dry clothes with a mocking smile. He ordered room service up -- “Early breakfast service,” he had groaned, glancing at the bedside clock -- and they ate pancakes and powdered sugar donuts (Nathan Drake: 3, Cassandra Drake: 4, Lewis: 7, much to everyone else’s horror).

Sam and Sully showed up at the door with a knock, and Sam scooped her up into his arms, held her not unlike her father had, and told her he would kill her if she ever pulled a stunt like this again. Cassie noticed Sully hugging _his_ boy the same way, muttering something to her dad and making him laugh. She introduced them both to Lewis, and her dad surprised her by piping up, pointing out Lewis’s contributions to finding her.

Everything would have been perfect if her mom had been there and if she had never had to go to sleep.

But eventually they all parted, Sam and Sully to their separate rooms -- “Gonna stretch out and get a couple hours. Flying in the middle of the goddamn night is for the bats.” -- Lewis to the bed on the right side of the room, Nate and Cassie to the bed on the left. They left the TV on, humming its way through another infomercial.

Lewis went to sleep first, snoring and snorting.

“He could sleep anywhere,” Nate muttered, shaking his head. He lay on his back on the pillow, one hand tossed sideways towards Cassie like an invitation. She didn’t want to want to hold his hand -- she was thirteen freakin’ years old -- but the darkness matched the hold of a plane she hadn’t meant to be on, matched the tiny insides of a Port-A-Potty she hadn’t been able to escape. She grabbed his hand, squeezed and held on until the metal of his wedding band left an indent in her skin.

She appreciated him not saying anything at all.

But even he fell asleep after a while, his breathing dropping to slow and rhythmic.

Cassie closed her eyes and tried counting sheep. She imagined fluffy, bleating little white lambs leaping over a tiny, knee high fence, tried not to let them stumble or get caught by the man chasing them with big hands and a beer belly. She opened her eyes again and stared at the ceiling.

She tried tightening every muscle in her body and then slowly loosening them, one by one. All it did was make her aware of aches and pains she didn’t know she had.

She experimented with waiting it out. Nothing happened except her exhaustion pushing down on her so hard it nearly caved in her bones.

Cassie got up carefully and crossed over to the other bed. Lewis rolled toward her, opened his eyes slowly, as she touched his hand to get his attention. She meant to make a casual comment, pretend to just want to talk.

Instead her bottom lip shook so hard she barely got out the whispered words. “I can’t sleep.”

Lewis sat up and closed his hand around hers. He searched her face for permission, and even in the darkness, must have seen it there on her features, for he pulled her into his arms. He smelled like body odor and wet dog, like rain-soaked clothes left in a pile too long, but he rubbed his hand along her shoulder and wedged them together like two travelers sharing one piece of driftwood.

“I’m still scared,” she whispered.

“I know. I _understand_.” He whispered back against her hair, his voice fierce, and she believed him. Never before had anyone her own age held her, and she would have guessed it to be horrible, uncomfortable, fumbling. Instead Lewis cradled her there until the fear gave way to a curious quiver in her chest, and as if he knew, he started to talk.

“I ran away from home when I was eleven,” he said, low and gentle. “My mom was a hooker and never knew or cared who my dad was. My step dad married her and wanted to clean her up. At least until they were too poor for their next fix, and then he had her right back on the streets.”

She let the rhythm of his talking hypnotize her, recognized he was not trying to make his experiences more important than hers, recognized that on some level, he wasn’t even really talking to her. He was simply releasing his story into the universe, an injured bird trying its first flight since the broken wing.

“They might be dead now. I might be dead now if I stayed. They never could control their tempers. They didn’t love me.”

Those four words, so simply stated, sliced through her own fears and newborn demons. Her throat tightened with tears.

“I’ve been gone a long time, and I’m safe now. I know how to keep myself from starving, I already knew how to avoid the cops, how to stay out of the system. But I still get scared at night. I think I’ll always get scared at night.”

Again, he spoke without any outreach for pity. Again, it flooded through her anyway.

“But you won’t. You’ll be okay.”

She nodded against him, and when she was ready, she slid back to sit across from him, laid against the other pillow and the headboard, and she shared her own tale, adopting his same calm, relaxed voice. Describing her fear as the Port-a-Potty door latched shut turned it from a shadow to a story. Her heart resumed its comfortable, normal beat, and she yawned.

“At least he won’t find the treasure. He’s missed too much. I figured it out. You have to have the spyglass to find it. The map isn’t the treasure. It’s where to start looking for the treasure,” she mumbled, threads of sleep weaving themselves into the fabric of her words. She closed her eyes.

“With the spyglass?” His voice sharpened.

“Yeah. He’ll never figure that out. Take that, fucker.” Her voice fell away, and she heard herself take a thin, small, snuffly breath. “I don’t want to move.”

“Then don’t.” He was all gentleness again. He eased the blanket over her. “Get some sleep, Cassie. You’ve earned it.”

The deep, painless sleep carried her away from Saint Lucia back to home, on the front porch playing backgammon with Sully while Elena and Sam whipped up dinner, while Nate showed Lewis how to catalogue 5th Century Korean artifacts. The salt air stung her nose as the breeze whipped her hair across her face. She dreamed of the happy life she had always known, and in the fantasy, she gifted that same life to the boy who had tucked her in.

When she woke up, Lewis was gone.


	6. Chapter 6

Nathan Drake plowed into the overgrown jungle for the second time in two days to chase the second little shit in his care to decide to go treasure hunting.

“I should have just gotten two dogs,” he grumbled. “Vicky never acts like this.”

Last night, he had thought he could never go back to sleep after his time laying there eavesdropping on the kids in the next bed. Their conversation seared through him, hot knives through soft flesh, long after Lewis and Cassie had both drifted off to sleep. He had been paralyzed by his own helplessness. He wanted to go God knows where to find a prostitute and her pimp and beat the shit out of them. He wanted to watch David Belfast’s eyes pop from his head as experienced hands closed his windpipe.

Yet even the angry must sleep, and he had been shaken awake without even realizing he had drifted off.

“Dad!” Cassie shook him again. “Dad, Lewis is gone!”

Because of course he was. Nate couldn’t possibly bask in the win of having Cassie back, of having kept Lewis alive, because the next trial had already lined itself up. His life never had just one mountain to climb.

To his daughter’s angry, sarcastic protests, he had packed his bag again and marched her down to Sully and Sam’s room.

“I lost another damn kid,” he said by way of a greeting when Sam opened the door in a towel. “Get dressed.”

As he and Sam prepared to head back into the hot, sticky, itchy jungle, Nate jabbed his finger at Sully. “She doesn’t go to the bathroom alone, you hear me? She doesn’t get personal space again until she’s eighteen.”

When he got to the parking lot, the Jeep he had rightfully stolen was gone.

“I’m going to kill him. I’m going to find him, make sure he isn’t in any danger, and then I am going to kill him,” Nate growled. Sam had the decency not to point out when Nate was full of shit. They cased the parking lot but saw no promising vehicles, nothing with the off-road capability they needed. So Nate’s anger had plenty of opportunity to simmer and bubble while they headed to the rental company and picked out a Jeep.

What the hell was the kid thinking? Heading off alone after marginal treasure? Foolish at best, suicidal at worst.

In a green and yellow striped Jeep like some perverse Jurassic Park knockoff, Sam and Nate had left town for dirt roads and thick vegetation.

“So Cassie’s definitely our girl,” Sam said, fiddling with the radio to stop the insistent calypso beat. “Sniffed out a global treasure hunt and followed it to a foreign country. I thought you were going to raise her better than that.”

“Well, you know they’re always debating nature versus nurture,” Nate groused.

“She’s a wicked combination of the two, don’t you think?”

“Unfortunately.”

“And this other kid, Lewis, right?” Sam reached into his front pocket and pulled out a peppermint. He unwrapped the hard candy and stuck it in his mouth, tucked into his cheek. “Jesus, these are a poor substitute for a smoke. I’da bought a pack if I thought you could keep a secret from the old man.”

“Can’t. He’s family.” The old button, once red and hot, now played as familiar joke, and Sam shot back a mocking sneer, lip curled.

“Yeah, yeah. So anyway, like I was saying, this other kid, taking off after it on his own. Didn’t Cassie say he was in on this deal from the start as a thief?”

“Yeah. Belfast picked him up off the streets to steal an old spyglass for him, kept him around as long as he was useful,” Nate said.

“And now Lewis is ready to take the whole treasure out from under the big guy. Screw over those who screw you over first. The next generation might just be alright.” Sam chomped on the peppermint, cracking it and then crunching it up audibly.

Nate shot him an irritated look. “You and I both know Blackbeard’s treasure is minor league.”

“Not when you don’t have to shave yet,” Sam countered. “So lay it on me. Where’s he headed?”

Sam listened to Nate give him the Cliff Notes version of the adventure, including the information he had obtained from eavesdropping on the kids, and Nate appreciated how his brother’s face twisted from amused neutral to pissed off. Nate knew exactly which piece of information had done it.

“That son of a bitch better not stick his neck out of his hidey hole or being locked in a bathroom’ll be the least of his problems,” Sam said.

“He ran like hell last night when I showed up.” Nate wished he had known then what he knew now; he would have put a bullet through the other man’s foot on principle. He guided the Jeep back on the same barely-beaten path from yesterday, easing off the gas but still bumping them out of their seats for momentary air time.

“What’d you choose? Which dig site?” Sam asked. He used the same voice now he had used when they were kids and he wanted to test Nate’s burgeoning skills.

“The first one. Belfast’s not going back to that other site.”

“Think Lewis knows that?”

Nate shrugged. “Maybe. We’ll see. But I’ll bet you a six pack Belfast’s here.”

“I’ll take that bet and root for you to win it.”

Nate guided the Jeep around a massive Lansan Tree, and another Jeep came into view, a dent in its back bumper. Pride, out of place and misguided but there nonetheless, bubbled up in his chest. Without a map or any driving experience, Lewis had navigated right back to the same place they parked yesterday. Nate tossed his Jeep into park alongside the other.

He and Sam made their way from the parking space toward the dig site. The sun, today a vicious fire in the sky, beat down on them, tattooed them with streaky lines of sweat. Before the dig site even came into view, Nate could hear Belfast’s bellowing.

“Let me guess. That asshole is Belfast,” Sam said.

“You got it in one.” Nate grabbed a low branch of a nearby tree and pulled himself up. From the perch, he viewed the camp. The local workers had gathered around the belligerent Belfast.

“Whichever one of you took it needs to return it right now. I don’t fucking care how long it takes. We’ll stand here in the sun all day until someone confesses,” Belfast was yelling. Nate deliberately pushed away the mental image of this blowhard shoving his little girl into a Port-a-Potty. It almost worked.

“He sounds like the nuns whenever something happened at St. Francis’s,” Nate muttered. He lifted binoculars to his eyes and tried to read the lips of the other speakers, the ones who had the good sense not to scream while operating an illegal digging operation. He had no luck, but if their bored expressions indicated anything, they were not concerned about the sunburned white man outlasting them in their own country’s beating sun.

“What do you think he’s missing?” Sam asked.

Nate shook his head. “It’s got to be the spyglass.”

“And it’s got to be Lewis.” Sam whistled softly. “Kid’s not bad.”

“I wish you’d stop acting like that’s a good thing.” Nate climbed back down to flat ground. He let his brain whir over the information at hand and barely noticed he was speaking aloud. “He stole the spyglass because Cassie told him it was the key, not the map. He’s got a spyglass, a plan to look through it, and he doesn’t know history or archaeology.”

Nate remembered their driving conversation yesterday, added in those variables until something in his head clicked.

“Oh hell.”

“I know that look. Spit it out, little brother.”

“Think about it. You’re a kid with a spyglass looking for a 300 year old clue. Where are you headed?”

Sam shook his head, shrugged impatiently. Nate pointed to the highest peak amongst the hilly, mountainous terrain.

“To higher ground,” Sam said, face brightening.

“It’s nature’s crow’s nest.”

“I’ll be goddamned.” Sam used Sully’s catchphrase unironically, and Nate didn’t point it out.

“I told him Mount Gimie was the highest peak in this part of the Caribbean. He’s headed up there.”

They walked back to the car to get their climbing gear and a semblance of a plan. Neither of them bothered to mention that the kid would be trekking on foot through dense rainforest and up the parts of cliff face labeled unclimbable in the guidebooks. Perhaps they had tired already of underestimating him.

 

\------------------------

  


“Split up to cover more ground. ‘I’ll take the cliffs.’ Brilliant idea." 

The trek to Mount Gimie, marked two hours in the guidebook, had its own tidy, carved path… in the direction Nate had sent Sam. On this side of it all, only barren, slippery rocks broke the dense plant life, and the canopy of heavy green leaves trapped humid air around him. His lungs protested, unsure if they were receiving enough oxygen alongside the moisture, but he kept moving at the insistent, steady half-jog anyway. The goal was to catch up with the kid before he got himself killed or got himself to the top of a damn mountain.

A set of muddy footprints caught his attention. Someone had stepped off of the grass and slipped. He placed his foot on top of one of the indents. Adult-sized. He thought of adolescents, Great Dane puppies with their giant feet waiting to be grown into. He could still being going the right way.

His phone hung in his pocket like a leaden weight, a slim reminder he needed to call his wife. Lies of omission followed murky, intangible rules. If he only lost Lewis for two hours, he knew damn well it didn’t count as a lie not to tell Elena -- especially since he had left their own child in perfect safety watching daytime television with Sully -- but with every passing minute, he wondered how long he could justify not calling her. She would be expecting them to wake up and hop a plane right away.

He squinted up the sun, climbing angrily into the sky and reminding him of the hours slipping away.

“Let’s see you keep track of these kids, Elena,” he muttered, then added for good measure, “Talking to your wife who isn’t here isn’t better than talking to yourself, Nate.”

The sounds of voices, quiet but clear in the stillness and chatter of the rainforest, caught his attention, and he weighed his options. He could assume the best, trust that the other people trespassing on the wrong side of a Saint Lucian national park were stand-up guys, or he could be realistic and assume they were part of this whole sloppy, unprofessional Blackbeard’s treasure hunt. He opted for the latter and shimmied his way up a tree, settling in amongst the leaves.

When the voices came closer and became people, three bodies came into view. Nate tilted his head carefully, keeping his breathing even and quiet, pressing down even the thump of his heart, and peered through the foliage.

“Even without the artifact, we’re making progress, eh?” The man standing at the front had a bit of a paunch, an entirely bald pate, and a wicked, very familiar English accent. “Having a bit of fun along the way?”

Nate grinned. Any second, the man would be sliding in a literary reference. Nate dropped straight out of the tree into the path in front of them. The two who flanked the leader reached for holsters.

“Nate? Bloody hell, mate. You about gave me a heart attack. What’re you doing here?” The leader, face slack with surprise and delight, stepped forward with his hand out.

Nate accepted it, and they both pulled one another into a half-hug. “Charlie Cutter, I could ask you the same question.”

“Lining my pockets, of course. I’m not the one who gave it up to have my pretty face on magazines,” Charlie teased warmly.

“You haven’t got the pretty face for it,” Nate said. Charlie laughed aloud.

“Boys, this here is Mr. Nathan Drake. You’ll have heard of him. Nate, this here is my brother, Martin.” Charlie pointed to the taller of the other men, and now Nate could see the same shark eyes and boxer’s jaw, family traits apparently. The other man had to have been at least 25 years younger than the first two. “And this is my baby brother, John. Our old pop wasn’t quite ready to stop having fun after the divorce.”

“Brothers?” Nate shook hands all around. “Charlie never mentioned you all.”

“Pot and kettle, mate. Pot and kettle,” Charlie said. “Now tell me you’re out of the game. Tell me you’re not out here on the trail of something.”

Nate raised an eyebrow. “Something? Oh, you mean Edward Teach’s lost pirate treasure and the spyglass that points the way?”

“Yeah. Something like that.” Charlie’s face fell, darkened.

“Nope. For me, I’m on the trail of something like a teenager who thinks he’s a treasure hunter.”

“Your kid?”

“Nope.”

“Now this I’ve gotta hear.”

By now, Nate must have been getting good at telling the story because he had Charlie riveted, grimacing through the tale of Cassie’s inadvertent kidnapping and laughing out loud by the end, offering his own asides to his brothers -- “Nate could scale a glacier with a toothpick” -- until Nate concluded the summary of his current predicament.

“Now the lad’s out here trying to climb Mount Gimie, and you’re going to stop him from breaking his neck,” Charlie said, shaking his head. “You’re just like your old man, aren’tcha?”

Nate startled at the stark image of the stone-faced man who had dropped his boys off at an orphanage and then realized that wasn’t what Charlie meant. The congenial, sly grin of one Victor Sullivan blotted the other image out and made Nate smile.

“Guess I am.” Nate said.

They spent a few more minutes talking, Charlie explaining how he and his brothers went out on a charter fishing cruise in North Carolina and met the blowhard captain who boasted he was going to find Blackbeard’s treasure -- “It was such an easy lift, I just had’ta do it.” -- and then had filched his map and taken on the search as brotherly fun. Nate knew better than to comment on the wistful lilt in Charlie’s voice, a small betrayal of some old pain seeded into the family tree. Nate understood; his had borne its own bitter fruits over the years.

“If we see Mr. Belfast, we’ll take care of ‘im for you. No call for mixing your little girl up in this game.”

“It’s not a game for him,” Nate warned. “He’s stupid and scared, but he’s serious. That’s just enough to make him dangerous.”

“Cowards die many times before their deaths,” Charlie said.

“Shakespeare?” Nate guessed.

“You’re getting smarter, my friend. It’s been good to see you. Hope you find your boy, and hope he’s wrong about needing to be at the top of the mount ‘cause we’re headed the other way.”

“Thanks, Charlie. Happy hunting.”

“Always.” They shook hands again, Nate gave an off-kilter salute to the other Cutter brothers, and they started back on their separate paths.

  


\------------------------

  


“The trick, babe, is to not to play it cool,” Sully said, stirring the olive around his gin martini. “The movies get that wrong. Too many men are out there trying to act like they don’t like women, like they want something more than good company and a good time." 

Cassie sat on her perch beside him at the hotel bar, a slushy virgin drink in front of her, a mostly empty bar space around her, and a very empty pit burrowing deeper in her stomach.

“I don’t think I’m going to be spending a lot of time trying to pick up women in bars, Sully.”

“Hey, you never know in this new world. Women pick each other up in bars all the time now.” She wrinkled her nose at the cheer that thought brought to the old man’s eyes. “But either way, it’s not my fault Nate had a girl. I’ve still got to pass on my wisdom. You can share it with your buddy, Lewis, if you’re not gonna use it.”

The hole in her stomach blossomed bigger. “You think he’s okay?”

“I think your dad and Sam aren’t going to let anything happen to anybody who’s important to you.” Sully tilted his chin down, met her eyes, and gave her The Look. “Now do you want to learn from the master or what?”

“Do I want to learn to pick up girls in bars?” Cassie reframed his query. “Let me think about that…”

“Don’t be a smartass. It’s not ladylike.” He winked at her, and she couldn’t stop her lips from tilting into a smile of their own, close-mouthed but genuine. Sully had always ribbed her for not being a boy, but he had never spared her any lesson because of it. She knew how to tie a tie -- classic and bow -- like a pro, and she could roll a cigar in seconds, even though she had never smoked one.

“Sure,” she relented. “Go ahead.”

She half-listened as he sipped his gin and broke his philosophy of women into bite-sized chunks.

“So first rule, no bullshit. If you’re looking for one night, you lay that on the table. If you’re looking to get married and have lots of babies that look like you, you tell her that,” Sully said. “No lies.”

“Got it. No lies.”

“Second rule…” Sully hesitated. Then he shook his head and chuckled. “Actually, I think the first rule might be the only one you’re old enough to know.”

“That means the other rules must be the good ones.” Cassie leaned a little closer. “I wanna hear them.”

“Tell you what. When you’ve had your first kiss, come see me, and I’ll let you in on rules two and three.”

“How many rules are there?”

“Five.”

“When do I get to know rules four and five?”

“A few years after that.” He downed the last of his gin. “Right now, just stick with rule one. It’ll get you through your first crush or two.”

“My first crush was in like second grade, Sully. I’m way past it.” She grinned at the memory of her writing Gabriel Bola’s name on the inside cover of her notebook and drawing little hearts around it. “He called me a fart-face when he found out I liked him.”

“Fart-face, huh?” Sully laughed. “Screw him. He’ll never get a girl like Cassie Drake for the rest of his life.”

“But see? Already survived my first crush and ready for rule two.”

“Doubt you’re through with crushes just yet.”

Her cheeks burned at the memory of Lewis, wrapping her up and hiding her from all the monsters and fears that threatened in the night, one person holding out a flashlight to drive away the darkness. When she looked at him, her pulse did not race and her tongue did not get tied. Those hallmarks of crushes didn’t even cross her mind around him. But he still floated to her thoughts for just a moment at Sully’s comment.

“Your first crush was on your Uncle Sam, you know.” Sully looked over the bar at the television without watching it, a smile crinkling the wrinkles around the corners of his eyes. “You used to tell us all how you were going to marry him.”

“Oh gross.” Cassie gagged, stuck out her tongue. “You all couldn’t find the right words to teach me about incest?”

Sully didn’t reply to her, though. His face broke into a smile as he eased to his feet, his arms coming wide. Cassie whirled around on her seat to see her mother walking into the bar. For a woman whose daughter had accidentally stowed away to a foreign country and gotten kidnapped, she looked surprisingly sunshiny. Cassie jumped to her feet too.

“Now if this isn’t the only woman worth picking up in a bar. The beautiful Elena Fisher.” Sully accepted Elena’s embrace gladly but only for a few seconds before letting her get to her daughter.

The two women, the original and her younger carbon copy, had been the same height for several months, but somehow Elena loomed larger as she enveloped her little girl in her arms. Cassie burrowed her face into her mom, marveled that she could still smell like home -- laundry detergent and cheap sunscreen -- after a flight.

“I love you so much,” Elena said in Cassie’s ear. No lecture, no joke, no admonishment, and this time, the hole in Cassie’s stomach shrank a little.

“I love you too, Mom. I’m sorry.” They held onto each other for long, precious seconds. “I thought you canceled your flight.”

She felt her mom’s head shake against her. “Sully called and told me about Lewis first thing this morning.”

“Not Dad?”

“I missed a call from him coming through the airport,” Elena replied to Cassie but kept her eyes on Sully, a slow smile appearing on her lips. Cassie had no idea what the shared secret, pleased expressions on their faces meant.

“It took him a few years, but he got the hang of rule number one,” Sully said.

“Rule number one?” Elena echoed.

“No bullshit,” Cassie filled in, still confused. Elena raised her “Watch your language” eyebrow. “Hey, it’s Sully’s rule.”

The big, open-mouthed laughs of the people in front of her shrank the hole in her stomach even smaller.

  


\------------------------

  


The rope spun in a slow, lazy twist, and Nathan Drake inched up again. Above him, he could hear a large, sharp crack from the wood. Creaking could be expected from three hundred year old wood, but cracking never boded well. He resisted the urge to take a hand off the rope and swat at the cloud of mosquitoes whining around his head. 

A series of profane words tingled on his lips as he edged up another foot and heard another ominous creak. He looked down at the impossible drop, a tangle of vivid green tree tops and certain death. He looked at the slick, mossy cliff face in front of him.

“I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered. 

Behind Lewis by who knows how long, slowed down by catching up with old friends and the rarity of clear footprints, Nate had decided to chance a rickety old pulley system. After getting his grapple securely latched on the first throw -- “Look who’s still got it!” -- luck seemed in his grasp. He had started up smoothly, cheerfully even.

And then this. The wood cracked visibly now, a seam of air opening between the beam and its support.

“Oh shit!” Nate abandoned caution in favor of wild climbing, hand over hand, his momentum swinging the rope as the split beam pulled further apart. It broke loose the exact moment he swung to the cliff face.

For an instant, he was weightless, clinging to nothing in mid-air, and he released the rope and a guttural screech at the same time. He lunged for the edge and managed to catch his forearms on the rock. He hung there, and then he started to laugh. A bird chided him for his noise and flew off.

“I’m alive. Again.” Nate hauled himself up onto the ledge and took stock of his arms, scraped and painful but without significant bleeding. He peered down into the abyss below. “And there’s no way anybody but me made it up that way.”

He looked around for footprints, broken branches, S.O.S. messages scratched into tree branches, any indicator of the kid. Nothing. He sat down on a fallen tree trunk and took a swig from his water bottle. His body protested too little sleeping, too much running, and vicious impact with an unforgiving cliff. His knees and back ached enough to chastise him for sitting down. He checked the phone in his pocket for text messages.

 _In Soufriere with Sully and Cassie. See you soon, cowboy,_ from Elena. 

 _taking detour since you think you’re going the right way keep in touch no news is bad news_ , from Sam.

He sent back quick replies. As he tapped on the flip phone’s tiny keyboard, he heard footsteps, slow, clumsy, tired footsteps. He put his hand on the pistol in his holster.

“If your name is Lewis, get over here. If it’s not, ask yourself if you feel lucky, punk.”

Lewis emerged from the trees. Exhaustion forgotten, Nate leapt to his feet. A gash on Lewis’s forehead leaked a slow dribble of blood down to blackened eyes and a grotesquely swollen nose. His backpack clung by one strap, the other hanging broken from the wet bag.

“I’m fine,” Lewis greeted.

“Oh yeah. I can tell that.” Nate ignored personal space to move right to the kid. He bent down, assessed the bleeding cut: deep, dirty, in need of at least six stitches. The twist in the bridge of Lewis’s nose made Nate wince. He touched it with two gentle fingers, and loose pieces shifted. It needed medical attention too. “What the hell happened?”

Lewis flinched and stepped back from Nate’s ministrations. “I slipped trying to climb where it was steep. I’ve been walking the long way around ever since.”

“Feeling pretty stupid, I guess. C’mon. Let’s go,” Nate said. Lewis took another step backwards, pushed his lips together and shook his head. He lifted one foot, mid-flight already.“You better not even think about running.”

“Why? What are you going to do to stop me?” Lewis’s eyes flashed.

“Don’t.” Nate held up both hands. His options were tackling the kid or shooting him, and neither one appealed at the moment.

“I’m going to figure out where this treasure is,” Lewis said. “I’m close.”

“Kid, you just don’t know when to quit,” Nate said, nearly groaning at how much he sounded like Sully. “You think you’re close. You think there’s a treasure. You think you won’t misjudge a jump in the dark and fall to your death. Thinking doesn’t amount to much.”

Lewis stared a hole through him. “That’s a nice speech, Mr. Drake, and I’m not trying to be disrespectful, but go home.”

Nate waited through the long, shaky breath Lewis drew in. He noticed for the first time how the kid cradled his left arm against his body, another injury from the fall, no doubt.

Lewis kept going. “You came to get Cassie, and you got her. I tried to team up with you to find Cassie, and she’s safe now.”

“You’re not,” Nate pointed out.

“I wasn’t before either. I don’t know what my next plan is, but it’s going to be easier with some gold in my pocket. I don’t want the whole thing. I don’t want to bring in a crane and digging equipment. This isn’t some crazy idea. I just want to pocket some stuff to pawn and keep me on my feet without scrambling for a while. This is what I do.”

A sarcastic comment came out before Nate could stop it. “You hunt for long-lost treasure all the time?”

Lewis’s face crumpled. He ground his words out around his clenched teeth.  “No. Normally I dig in a dumpster for food someone’s thrown out and hope I’ll get lucky and find five dollars on the sidewalk.”

Old hunger pains pinched in Nate’s stomach. Once upon a time, in Cartagena, he had eaten the meat off a chicken carcass someone else hadn’t picked clean.

“Listen, I get it,” he began.

“It doesn’t matter if you get it or not. I’m on my own. I’m not your responsibility.”

Nate straightened up, an idea striking him painlessly. “What if I helped you?”

“I’m not a charity case,” Lewis muttered. “You’re not listening.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.” His volume kicked up; his tempo increased. “You’re smart, resourceful, motivated, but right now, you’re down on your luck.”

The understatement of the year didn’t make Lewis flinch or back up any further, so Nate pressed on. “I’ll make you a deal. Right now, we go back to Soufrière, and you sell the spyglass. I know a guy who’ll buy it. You lose out on this treasure, but you put some money in your pocket.”

“Okay…” Lewis offered the kind of okay that was not affirmation but invitation to keep talking.

“Then come back with us. I’ll float you room and board while you go to school and let me teach you shit. History and stuff, remember that? I’ll teach you everything you’ll ever need to know, and when you’re eighteen, we’ll get you papers, and you can go anywhere. You can seek your fortune however you want, and I’ll help.”

“That’s char--” Lewis began, but Nate cut him off.

“And then when you strike it big, you can pay me back. For it all.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “It’s an investment for both of us. We’ll both end up richer than we would be otherwise.”

“What if I never find anything? I’ll have a debt I can’t pay.” But he had softened, taken a step forward, pulled by the magnetism of the deal in front of him.

“You’ll find stuff. You’re going to be taught by Nathan Drake. You heard of him?” Nate’s mouth quirked into a smile.

Lewis half-smiled too. “Yeah. His daughter says he’s a legend.”

“He’s found more lost cities than anyone else ever has. He’s got the best record of any Drake, even Sir Francis.” Nate dropped the arrogant act and continued, “What do you say, Lewis? Do we have a deal?”

Lewis didn’t smile or look happy. Instead his eyes burned with an intense, naked ambition so familiar it transported Nate back in time.

“Tell me the deal again. Real simple.”

“You don’t go anywhere until you’re eighteen. I’ll teach you everything you need to know and won’t let you starve. Then you take off to make us both a fortune,” Nate paused. “And you don’t take Cassie with you this time.”

“Technically she took me this time.”

“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

“I’ll learn everything you have to teach me and then I’ll go make my own legend.” Lewis held out his hand, and Nate shook it with all the seriousness of a man making the deal of a lifetime. “And I won’t take Cassie.”

“Deal.” Nate let go. “Now let’s get off this damn mountain and out of this damn country.”

“It’s a pretty country,” Lewis observed.

“No. You know what’s pretty? My hammock on my front porch. And lucky for me, I won’t have to leave it for a long time because you and Cassie are grounded until you’re eighteen.”

“Four years is a long time.”

“Whoops. Excuse me. I misspoke. Until _she’s_ eighteen.”

They kicked into comfortable banter as they started gingerly back to civilization and the people waiting for them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one left! Time flies when you're having fun.


	7. Chapter 7

****

**_Epilogue_**

“Jesus. Do I really look that old?”

On the laptop screen, Nathan Drake wrapped an arm around his daughter’s shoulders as she leaned up and kissed his cheek. In high resolution, his grey hairs and crow’s feet sprang to vibrant life. He pointed a real finger at these digitized signs of aging. 

“You know, salt and pepper are my favorite spices,” Elena said, ruffling his hair.

“They better be,” he muttered, managing to hold a straight line mouth even as his cheeks tried to pull him to a smile. He kept watching the screen. “Are you almost done editing this?”

“Yeah.” She clicked a few buttons on the side of the playing video, adjusted her glasses on her nose. “I need better readers. These ones aren’t strong enough anymore.”

“It’s rough getting old, isn’t it?” He teased.

“Shut the hell up, kid.” Sully bellowed as he passed on his way to the bathroom. 

“I guess I can’t be too old if my husband’s still a kid,” Elena retorted. They touched noses as he stood up, but the proximity lit a fire low and hungry in his stomach. He leaned back down for a real kiss, and she rocked up to him, wrapped the front of his shirt in both hands. She kissed him dizzy and then let go and casually returned to her work.

“We’ll finish this later,” he said, pointing a finger at her. She smirked as she typed.

He padded his way to the kitchen behind Sully and opened the refrigerator door. His six pack of a nice Long Island IPA boasted only two beers.

“There’s too many adults in this house,” he called out to no one in particular as he snagged one. He smacked the top off on the edge of the counter. 

As if summoned by her father’s complaining, Cassie walked into the kitchen, an open beer in both hands, a damp swimsuit leaving dark wet stains on her cover-up. He raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged.

“One’s for mom, I promise.”

“Why don’t you two drink that bottle of wine someone gave you for graduation?”

“Because you have good taste in beer, Dad.” 

The compliment served its purpose; he gave a perfunctory grumble but said nothing else. He dragged a long sip of his beer and watched Cassie round the corner into the living room. 

Two days ago, she had strolled across the stage at the University of Chicago for her Master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies. Amidst hallowed halls and serious scholars, under the formal name of Cassandra Morgan Drake, she had grinned and flashed her parents the shaka from the stage. 

Parents always talked about the days their kids were born, how the world fell off its axis and became something new, but somehow watching her take these sure, easy steps across the stage upended him more than any other. His little girl had somehow turned 24 and become the kind of person about whom professors said, “You must be so proud, Mr. Drake. Cassandra is the most brilliant historical analyst we’ve ever had.”

And he was still the kind of dad who barely refrained from grinning and saying, “Oh yeah? I taught her everything she knows.”

Only that wasn’t true anymore. Last night, they had stayed up on the porch until 1 a.m., talking about the implications of Amenemhat’s tomb on modern archaeology and ancient studies. She taught him a lot these days.

Yesterday the house had buzzed with moving all of her bags back into her room, grocery shopping for the addition of her, Sam, and Sully for a few weeks, and the excitement of having a second-round college graduate in the Drake family. Cassie was home until one of her cover letters yielded a job she would actually take. Nate had never seen someone reject so many top-notch offers.

Today’s buzz -- the editing the graduation video and the cooking of not one but two lasagnas -- welcomed the other wayward kid. 

Nate walked over to the fridge and pulled off the note, scratched out in red pen on the back of a Chilean museum guide.

_Nate,_

_We were right. I found it where we thought. I’m not going to make Cassie’s graduation. My sentence stretches until the day after. I’ll call to let her know. Tell Elena not to worry. There’s enough rats here for them to keep even me fed!_

_Love,  
Lewis_

If Nate had expected Cassie to be disappointed, he hadn’t been paying attention. Since the day the kid came home from Soufrière, Cassie had navigated Lewis better than any of them. In the middle of the night, she used to sneak out to the couch to check on him as if his sadness vibrated on a frequency only she could find. When Elena wanted to throw him a surprise birthday party for his fifteenth, Cassie had been the one to tell her it was a bad idea and refrained from saying “I told you so” when he expressed relief at not having to be celebrated.

When she got the call he would miss her college graduation, she had shrugged and said, “He made the first one, so he’s batting .500,” without missing a beat.

Halfway through his beer and verging on maudlin as he revisited memories, Nate heard the front door open. 

“I’m home!” Lewis bellowed. Nate watched his girls come running from the living room, hitting their boy as a single blonde tornado. 

Once gawky, Lewis had filled into the promise of his adolescent frame, every inch of 6’3” and broad as a college tight end. Nate assessed him over the heads tucked against him. No new scars or bruises leapt out to worry Nate, just the same old crooked nose from a Saint Lucian cliff face.

“You’re skinnier than last time you came home,” Elena said, tugging the waistband of Lewis’s pants out to prove her point.

“That’s why they make belts and your takeout budget,” he replied, earning himself a cuff upside his head.

“I’ll have you know I cooked.”

Lewis’s face softened, his eyes brightening. “I was just teasing. I knew you would.”

“I helped,” Cassie added, raising an eyebrow. Lewis mimicked her face, exaggerated it, raising both eyebrows sky-high.

“That is shocking. Has someone called for backup pizza?” They all laughed, but Lewis had already moved on from his joke to Nate. He came in first, leaned into Nate as if he were still shorter and smaller and just a kid. They hugged until the solidity of Lewis’s frame, the easy relaxation of his face, convinced Nate that the stint in a Chilean jail hadn’t done lasting harm. By the time he had gotten the note, it had been too late to fly down and get Lewis out.

“We were right,” Lewis repeated the words of his note, and they shared a smile.

“Later,” Nate said. “Right now, get your ass in the rec room to say hi to Sully.”

“How is he doing?” In that instant, Nate loved Lewis for the furrowed, concerned look on his face.

“Hanging in there. Remission’s been a good thing.”

“Cool.” Lewis brightened and disappeared to the rec room.

Splashes of happiness splattered the house all evening. Everyone ate too much lasagna and swapped stories. Cassie made Lewis snort milk -- from his fourth glass -- through his nose as she described her Airbnb in Cairo, and Sully managed, with a conspiratorial wink to the youngest members of the family, to make all three older Drakes screech, “Not that story!” when he started a favorite Brazilian tale from his youth.

Sam and Elena played Just Dance on the game console to the embarrassed judgment of everyone with better sense, and Nate silently enjoyed them not being able to beat Nomad609’s high score. If any of them knew it had been him, twerking in the living room at 3 a.m., rather than a computer, they didn’t let on. At least not while he was in earshot.

Cassie and Lewis walked on the beach for an hour and stood talking on the porch even longer. Nate and Elena watched the kids’ tall, adult shadows against the light from the windows, and they slipped their arms around one another, glowing in silent, indescribable, mysterious pride.

Even when yawns came so big they threatened to crack his jaw, Nate forced himself to stay awake, to outlast everyone else. When Sam, the final holdout, called it a night, Lewis chuckled through his own yawn.

“Damn, I’m tired. I thought they’d never go to bed,” he said.

He and Nate walked out to the office and spread out their papers over the work table. Lewis pulled new schematics and customs reports from his bag to add to the pile. Together they pored over their work, marking up their moments of brilliance and turning a critical eye to their miscalculations. In the end, they both concluded it had been a job very well-planned and mostly well-executed. 

Nate snagged two celebratory beers out of the mini-fridge. When he turned back to hand one to Lewis, he saw a wad of cash held out for him. 

“Here’s your cut,” Lewis said.

Nate frowned at it. “Keep it.”

“You always say that. This is your half.”

Nate sighed, pushed away the cash, and sat down. Lewis sat down too. For years, they had battled over how to split the money. Lewis thieved for a living, but his bedrock honesty hadn’t changed since he was a punk fourteen year old. He always insisted on Nate taking his half -- “You do all the hard work with me. I just do the fun part. Plus that was our deal.” -- and if denied, he would leave it in strange places. Just last week, Elena had found six hundred bucks in the pantry behind an old can of sauerkraut. 

“I don’t want it.” Nate said. He sipped on his beer, tilted back in his chair. Something in the air, the rush and bustle of Cassie’s graduation followed by the brief moments of everyone in the same home, made him need to say it. “I never wanted it, you know. The deal was never about money.”

“I know,” Lewis said. They both smiled and mutually dropped the subject before anything sentimental could emerge.

“So where to next?” Nate asked.

“I’m going after Blackbeard’s treasure.”

Something in the way he said it brought to mind Henry Avery’s vast, glittering hoard, the dream of a lifetime for two brothers. Nate tilted his head.

“Oh really? Even after Charlie Cutter gave up because he no longer thought it existed?”

“He missed something.”

Nate noted the certainty on Lewis’s face and nodded. “Well, alright then. We can get started tomorrow. Not tonight, I’m beat.”

Lewis swallowed audibly, offered a tight-lipped smile. “Actually, I’m going to plan this one myself.”

The words were a sucker punch, took Nate’s breath away, made him blink a few times to keep the pain from his face. Their hours in this very spot, planning every second of the jobs, always followed by their weeks apart when Nate watched his phone like a hawk, only relaxing when the cheerful phone calls came through to confirm all was well… He replayed them in his mind, silently searched for what he had misread, what had gone wrong.

“Why?” He commended himself on the casual tone.

“Because I’m breaking our deal.” Lewis closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Nate couldn’t tell who was being braced for whatever he was about to say. “Cassie’s coming with me.”

“What?” Nate heard his own voice ask the stupid question as if he was too slow-witted to understand a simple statement. Lewis and Cassie were going after Blackbeard’s treasure together. A lifetime of legal archaeology and six years of intense college education on historical topics had spilled out not a scholar or a museum curator but a treasure hunter. 

“Now that she’s got her degree, she’s going to talk to you, and I wouldn’t have told you first except…”

“Except you never told her that part of our deal.”

Lewis straightened in his chair, sucked in a deep breath, and finished his fearful confession with another truth. “No. Because I want her to come.”

“Who asked who?” He didn’t know why it mattered, why he wanted to know.

“We’ve been talking about it since we got back from Saint Lucia, but I told her I wouldn’t take her along until she finished school.”

Eleven years. Half a lifetime, they had been dreaming of these adventures. Yet Lewis had never taken her. He had been working full-time as a thief and treasure hunter since the day he turned eighteen, and yet Cassie had been a student, summa cum laude, best of the best.

She wanted to be a treasure hunter and a thief and a liar and a degenerate.

She wanted adventures and legacies and mysteries. 

She wanted her turn. She was a Drake, after all.

Nate sighed. “Let me get this straight. You don’t want my help planning your next heist?”

Lewis hesitated. “I mean…”

“Because I’m still the best in the business, last time I checked.”

Lewis’s whole body relaxed under the warmth of Nate’s forgiving smile. Nate stood up, offered his hand to pull Lewis to his feet too. 

“Then I guess I don’t just want your help, I need it. I’m taking a rookie along, after all,” Lewis said. 

“We’ll get to work tomorrow. Cassie can help. We’ll show her the ropes,” Nate replied.

“Okay,” Lewis said. They started back to the house together, stride for stride, side by side. When they reached the door, Nate paused. An idea tickled at the back of his brain, a feather stroking hundreds of tiny details in hundreds of memories, stirring them all up at once to paint a new picture.

“Just don’t let her get hurt and don’t fall in love with her,” Nate ventured. “Deal?”

“Nuh-uh. No way. I’m through making deals with you,” Lewis said, but it was what he didn’t say that Nate suddenly knew. 

Nate recognized a new beginning when he saw one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the true spirit of the Uncharted series, I knew we had to end with an Epilogue. <3
> 
> Thank you to each of you who decided to take a chance on a fic by someone who had never written in this fandom, writing her first original character, and bungling up history, geography, and more each step of the way. Your feedback has made playing in this world even more fun than I hoped it would be!

**Author's Note:**

> Updates will be weekly, whether or not anyone is reading. 
> 
> Like all fanfiction writers, I love comments that invite conversations about the characters and ideas we love.


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